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Hours clause

A reinsurance clause bounding in time what counts as a single loss, generally 72 or 168 hours depending on the peril.

Definition

March 2020: the tampered update of Orion, SolarWinds' monitoring software, starts reaching its customers, and the intrusion only becomes public in December. The hours clause sets the window within which multiple losses are grouped into a single occurrence, seventy-two hours for a hurricane, one hundred and sixty-eight for other perils. It makes sense because a hurricane has a beginning, an end and a name. It turns absurd for a software compromise planted one day, dormant for months, then activated in waves, where nobody can say what day the event actually happened.

Its 8 cross-references, woven across the glossary's 18 categories
Hours clause: Reinsurance glossary illustration, AlgoPolis
Example

Since the first cyber catastrophe bond, placed privately in early 2023, and the first 144A issue in January 2024, these bonds have been written on a per-occurrence basis, applying a notion of occurrence, and thus an hours clause, to a peril that has no natural one.

Read next
ReinsuranceExcess of loss treaty (XL)A non-proportional treaty in which the reinsurer responds only beyond a loss threshold, the retention, up to a defined limit.Read the entry →ReinsuranceReinstatementThe right to restore a reinsurance layer after a loss has consumed it, on payment of a premium, so as to remain covered for the rest of the period.Read the entry →ReinsuranceAttachment pointThe loss threshold above which a reinsurance layer begins to respond, also called its priority.Read the entry →
Put it to work
QuizModule check: the hand that places the windowAcademy questions on this concept, each one marked and explained.Test yourself →
Related terms
On the Wire, where this term came up
October 20, 2026The riots in France could cost insurers up to 1.2 billion euros
Go further at the Academy
Course · RT-1Who carries what, and at what price?LessonThe hours clause, or who decides what counts as one eventLessonPer risk or per event, and the hour that decidesQuizModule check: what the layer calls a loss
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