Written line and signed line
The difference between the share an underwriter accepts at quoting time and the share it actually carries once the placement closes, the gap coming from signing down.
On a London market MRC, the standard contract format since 2007, each underwriter writes a percentage line, and the contract carries the signing provisions that will decide what is left of it. The written line is what the underwriter stamps when the broker presents the slip; the signed line is what it actually carries once the placement closes and lines are scaled back to one hundred percent. A risk oversubscribed to 166% signs at 60% of written, and the gap runs through the whole book. An underwriter writing fifteen percent on placements consistently cut that way ends up with a nine percent book: reasoning on written lines, its plan overstates the exposure it really carries by forty percent. The lead protects itself with a line to stand, which escapes signing down and pays for its work in quoting and setting terms. Technical accounting and accumulation monitoring follow the same discipline, since exposure is measured in signed lines, never in written ones. Reserved capacity, on the other hand, is consumed at the written line, and that is where the plan gets caught out.
Specialty market underwriter, 2026 year of account, premium plan of 80M EUR. Cumulative written lines over the year: 118M EUR. Average signing down observed: 31%. Signed premium: 81M EUR, so the plan is met, but capacity reserved through the year exceeded the plan by nearly fifty percent, which blocked business it could otherwise have written.
written line, signed line, line, signing down, written line vs signed line
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