Reserve run-off result
The gap between the reserve carried at a year end and the cost actually paid afterward, the only public judge of how prudently a book was reserved.
Since 2017 every European insurer has published template S.19.01 in its solvency and financial condition report: ten accident years down the side, ten development years across, for payments and for reserves. It is the only public data that shows, without access to files, whether a company reserves too much or too little. A run-off surplus is the excess found when a cohort's claims end up costing less than what was set aside; a deficit is the reverse. The number is mechanical, reading it is not. A steady surplus can mean prudent management or over-reserving that smooths results from one year to the next. A repeated deficit leaves little doubt: the company published, for years, results that did not exist.
The solvency and financial condition report, which every European insurer has published annually since 2017, shows the triangle in its public version, S.19.01.21: ten accident years down the rows, N-9 to N, plus a "prior" row, and ten development years across the columns, for payments and for reserves. The version filed with the supervisor, S.19.01.01, goes back to N-14. An outside reader therefore has only ten cohorts to judge, without inside information, whether a firm has systematically over-reserved or under-reserved: enough for motor, short for a long-tail liability book.
- EIOPA, Q&A on regulation database, question 2094 (S.19.01.21: 'prior' means before N-9; S.19.01.01: before N-14), on Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/895, Annex II
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