NHT (Netherlands)

After September 11, reinsurers withdrew. Dutch insurers answered by creating, in 2003, the Nederlandse Herverzekeringsmaatschappij voor Terrorismeschaden (NHT), a reinsurance company that takes on its members' terrorism exposure across nearly all lines: property, life, health. The pool has an annual cap of around one billion euros, made up of the insurers' retention, private reinsurance and a layer provided by the Dutch government. Everything runs through a shared contract text, the Clausuleblad terrorismedekking, which members attach to their policies. It sets the rules the indemnity depends on: terrorism is covered only up to what NHT pays out, and NHT itself decides, under its claims settlement protocol, whether an event counts as terrorism. If the year's claims exceed capacity, each insured receives a percentage of its loss. For large risks, the clause also caps the indemnity per location per year, at around 75 million euros. The scheme thus shifts part of the accumulation risk onto the end insured, who learns the payout rate only after the fact. It has not been tested by a large loss so far, which makes its calibration hard to judge from outside. For an international program, the question comes up at every Dutch location: the local policy refers to the Clausuleblad. The per-location limit can fall below the value of the property, and the gap is left to the master policy or to a political violence policy.