Category: Reinsurance structures · Reviewed by Tim Roche, Director · PI & Commercial · Last reviewed 2026-06-05
Cat XL is the standard market abbreviation for catastrophe excess of loss reinsurance. The term is used in slip wording, programme descriptions, broker submissions and rating presentations. Reinsurers’ SFCR disclosure typically reports separate cat XL premium and aggregate cover by territory.
Category: Reinsurance structures Also known as: catastrophe XL, cat excess of loss Related concepts: catastrophe excess of loss, excess of loss reinsurance, XL reinsurance
Cat XL is shorthand for catastrophe excess of loss. Cat XL programmes are the principal mechanism by which insurers protect themselves against accumulation events — windstorm, earthquake, flood, terrorism — that affect multiple individual risks simultaneously.
The reader is referred to the principal entry catastrophe excess of loss for detailed treatment.
The abbreviation is purely shorthand; the underlying legal and regulatory framework is the same as for catastrophe excess of loss. Slips and treaty wordings typically use the full description ‘Catastrophe Excess of Loss Reinsurance’ or ‘Cat XL’ interchangeably.
Cat XL appears in reinsurance programme descriptions such as ‘£100m of property cat XL placed across two layers’. The London market and Bermuda market are the dominant centres for cat XL placement, with continental European reinsurers (Munich Re, Swiss Re, Hannover Re, SCOR) providing significant additional capacity.
The pricing of cat XL is highly cyclical, with rates moving sharply after major events. The 2022 European windstorm series (Daniel, Dudley, Eunice) produced cat XL rate rises of 20–40 per cent at the 1 January 2023 renewals, particularly for loss-affected programmes.
An illustrative example: an Apex client commercial property insurer might describe its catastrophe reinsurance programme as ‘cat XL of £175m xs £25m placed across three layers in the London market and Bermuda’.
This entry is part of the Apex Insurance Wiki. Last reviewed by Matt Bartlett on 2026-06-05. Next review: 2026-12-05.
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