The placing document summarizing a treaty's terms, which each reinsurer signs by writing its share on it.
The slip is the document on which a reinsurance placement is concluded: it summarizes the risk, the structure, the period, the premium and the principal clauses, and each reinsurer writes on it the share it accepts and then authenticates it. It runs to a few pages where the wording runs to dozens, and that is exactly what makes it the instrument of the subscription market: a broker walks one document round the underwriters, each seeing what the previous ones have taken. The problem it solves is assembling a panel quickly: gathering twenty reinsurers on a complete contract would take months, while a slip lets a placement close in days. Its brevity is also its weakness, since it leaves out everything that will decide a dispute, hence the contract certainty requirement that the full wording now be agreed before inception rather than months after the slip is signed.
The placement of a 60 million euro catastrophe layer in 2026 closes in eleven days on a four-page slip, with fourteen reinsurers. The leader takes 15 percent and sets the price; the thirteen followers align, with shares from 2 to 12 percent. The full thirty-eight page wording is signed by all fourteen parties nineteen days before inception, in line with the cedant's contract certainty policy.
Slip, Placing slip, Note de placement, Fiche de placement