# Caldera Re

> The fictional reinsurer used as the running example on this site: its profile, business relationships, contract portfolio, and two-tier loss dataset.

Source: https://reinsurance.dev/caldera-re/

**Caldera Re** is a fictional specialty reinsurer that serves as the running example throughout this site. Every contract structure, every metric calculation, every code example, and every interactive visualisation uses Caldera Re's portfolio. Every number on this site traces back to this portfolio and to [the data](https://reinsurance.dev/caldera-re/#the-data) below.

## Company profile

| Attribute             | Value                                            |
| --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ |
| Name                  | Caldera Re Ltd.                                   |
| Headquarters          | Zurich, Switzerland                              |
| Founded               | 2008                                             |
| Specialty             | Property catastrophe reinsurance                 |
| Geographies           | North America, Caribbean, Europe, Japan           |
| Perils covered        | Hurricane, earthquake, European windstorm        |
| Business model        | Traditional reinsurer with some involvement in insurance-linked securities (ILS) |
| Annual premium income | ~\$250M company-wide (the six modelled contracts: \$68M at 100% terms) |
| Capital base          | ~\$800M                                          |
| Employees             | ~120                                             |

Caldera Re is large enough to maintain a diversified multi-peril, multi-geography portfolio, but small enough that every contract moves the portfolio's aggregate metrics.

## Business relationships

| Entity             | Role               | Relationship                                       |
| ------------------ | ------------------ | -------------------------------------------------- |
| SunCoast Insurance | Cedent             | Multi-peril US insurer (hurricane and earthquake); largest cedent |
| Pacific Mutual     | Cedent             | California-based insurer; primary earthquake exposure |
| Baltica Insurance  | Cedent             | Northern European insurer; windstorm exposure       |
| Atlas Cat Fund     | ILS fund / Cedent  | Alternative capital partner; also cedent for C6     |
| Trident Re         | Cedent             | Caribbean insurer; hurricane exposure; the proposed C7 |
| NorthStar Re       | [Retrocession](https://reinsurance.dev/glossary/#retrocession) provider | Provides retrocession protection to Caldera Re; the site does not model Caldera Re's outward program |
| Meridian Brokers   | Broker             | Primary broker relationship                         |

## Portfolio

Caldera Re's portfolio consists of six contracts chosen to illustrate different contract structures, perils, geographies, and inter-contract relationships. The portfolio is intentionally small (six contracts rather than thousands) so that every calculation can be verified by hand.

Every figure on the site is computed from the unrounded losses in the demo CSVs and displayed rounded: one decimal for losses (the terms catalog's Trial 9 split tables use two), two for capital and premium figures. Where a table shows components and a total, each is rounded separately from its own unrounded value, so the displayed components can miss the displayed total by a unit in the last place. The committed Python reproduces every figure at full precision.

*[Table: Portfolio table. See the web page: https://reinsurance.dev/caldera-re/]*

```mermaid
graph LR
    SC[SunCoast Insurance]:::Losses --> C1[C1 · FL hurricane CatXoL · 14.5%]:::Contract
    SC --> C2[C2 · CA/AZ earthquake AggXoL · 20%]:::Contract
    SC --> C3[C3 · All-US AggXoL · 10%]:::Contract
    C1 -.->|inures to| C3
    C2 -.->|inures to| C3
    PM[Pacific Mutual]:::Losses --> C4[C4 · CA earthquake CatXoL · 25%]:::Contract
    BA[Baltica Insurance]:::Losses --> C5[C5 · EU windstorm quota share · 30%]:::Contract
    AT[Atlas Cat Fund]:::Losses --> C6[C6 · JP earthquake CatXoL · 15%]:::Contract
    C1 & C2 & C3 & C4 & C5 & C6 --> H[Caldera Re portfolio]:::Metric

    classDef Losses fill:#F5CEBC,stroke:#B16C4B,stroke-width:1.5px,color:#2B2620
    classDef Contract fill:#BFDBF8,stroke:#4F84BA,stroke-width:1.5px,color:#2B2620
    classDef Metric fill:#BDE2CB,stroke:#459269,stroke-width:1.5px,color:#2B2620
```

Each cedent's losses feed the contracts it places; the percentage on each contract is Caldera Re's participation. SunCoast places three, and C3 covers SunCoast's whole US book net of what C1 and C2 already recovered: the [inuring](https://reinsurance.dev/glossary/#inuring) relationship the [Programs](https://reinsurance.dev/financial-modelling/programs/#inuring) page works through.

The **[participation](https://reinsurance.dev/glossary/#participation)** column is Caldera Re's booked share of each contract. The terms and premium above are stated at 100%, as [contracts are throughout this site](https://reinsurance.dev/financial-modelling/composition/#composing-contracts-from-the-blocks): standalone metrics are computed on the full contract, and participation enters only at portfolio roll-up.

### Why this portfolio

The six contracts are designed to demonstrate:

1. **Geographic diversification**: US, Europe, Japan, peril regions the dataset [treats as independent](https://reinsurance.dev/applications/portfolio-analytics/#step-2-roll-it-up)
2. **Peril diversification**: hurricane, earthquake, windstorm
3. **Structure diversity**: catastrophe excess of loss ([CatXoL](https://reinsurance.dev/financial-modelling/contracts/catxol/), per occurrence), [quota share](https://reinsurance.dev/financial-modelling/contracts/quota-share/) (proportional), aggregate excess of loss ([AggXoL](https://reinsurance.dev/financial-modelling/contracts/aggxol/), annual aggregate)
4. **Multi-contract cedent with [inuring](https://reinsurance.dev/glossary/#inuring)**: SunCoast places three contracts (C1, C2, C3); C3's subject is SunCoast's total net of C1 and C2 recoveries, which makes it the main example for teaching contract dependencies
5. **Shared underlying events**: SunCoast and Pacific Mutual both see California earthquake events at different loss scales
6. **Hand-computable numbers**: all parameters are round numbers for easy mental arithmetic

:::note[In Practice]
The hand-computable design produces unrealistic reinsurance economics at demo scale. C4's \$6M premium on its \$10M occurrence limit is a 60% [rate on line](https://reinsurance.dev/glossary/#rate-on-line-rol) (multiples above a real catastrophe layer's rate), and C1 (47%) and C6 (43%) are also far above real layers' rates. The reason is the sampling of the [20-trial demo tier](https://reinsurance.dev/toolkit/trials/#demo-scale), explained on the Trials page; every premium-derived ratio on this site demonstrates a method and is not a market benchmark. The contracts with paid reinstatements (C1, C4 and C6) are priced with their [reinstatement premium](https://reinsurance.dev/financial-modelling/beyond-loss/reinstatement-premium/) counted: each premium is a little below the contract's technical premium on that basis. The [standalone pricing story](https://reinsurance.dev/applications/standalone-pricing/#step-6-the-verdict) cites what realistic rates on line look like.
:::

A seventh contract, C7 (Trident Re Caribbean Hurricane CatXoL), is a candidate for portfolio addition; the marginal-pricing application that would weigh it is *(planned)*.

## The data

Every worked example runs on Caldera Re's catastrophe-model output: one [year event loss table (YELT)](https://reinsurance.dev/toolkit/trials/#the-yelt) per cedent, generated by a stochastic simulation and published as CSV files. The [data files page](https://reinsurance.dev/caldera-re/data/) lists all ten with row counts, sizes, and download links. There are two tiers of the same simulation. The **20-trial demo tier** is the one every number in prose comes from: small enough to check by hand, with dense tail coverage that visibly exercises every contract mechanism (attachment, reinstatement, inuring). The **1,000-trial tier** is the higher-resolution contrast, published on the [demo scale](https://reinsurance.dev/toolkit/trials/#demo-scale) section and loadable in any runnable example. Neither tier's loss amounts are market-calibrated estimates of anything; the mechanics are exact, the amounts are not.

| Tier | File per cedent | Rows (all five files) | What it is for |
| --- | --- | ---: | --- |
| 20 trials | [`<cedent>_20.csv`](https://reinsurance.dev/caldera-re/data/#the-20-trial-demo-tier) | 3,977 | Every worked example and every number in prose |
| 1,000 trials | [`<cedent>_1000.csv`](https://reinsurance.dev/caldera-re/data/#the-1000-trial-tier) | 188,186 | The resolution contrast; `load_cedent(name, 1000)` |

Each cedent's YELT holds a subset of the model's event catalog, scaled to the size of the cedent's book. SunCoast is the largest cedent. Its YELT holds US hurricane at full scale and US earthquake at 0.35: a third of Pacific Mutual's earthquake exposure on the same events, which is what makes the shared-event examples work.

| Cedent | Perils | Geographies | Scale | 20-trial rows |
| --- | --- | --- | ---: | ---: |
| SunCoast | Hurricane, earthquake | FL, GA, MS, LA, TX / CA, AZ | 1.0 / 0.35 | 1,657 |
| Pacific Mutual | Earthquake | CA, AZ | 1.0 | 1,257 |
| Baltica | Windstorm | FR, DE, UK | 1.0 | 578 |
| Atlas Cat Fund | Earthquake | JP | 1.0 | 391 |
| Trident Re | Hurricane | Caribbean | 0.8 | 94 |

The 20-trial tier draws 571 distinct catalog events (from about 850 in the full catalog), 29 to 68 events per trial, at a trial loss across all five cedents between \$91.9M and \$841.1M. Losses and total insured value are in millions of US dollars, one currency, strictly positive under the site's [sign convention](https://reinsurance.dev/toolkit/trials/#sign-convention). The dataset is frozen: the generator that produced it is maintained privately, and the [data page](https://reinsurance.dev/caldera-re/data/#checking-a-download) lists what a reader can check against the published files, SHA-256 checksums included.

The loader reads one cedent at one tier; this summary reads all ten files and prints what each holds (the 1,000-trial CSVs are a few megabytes each; the first run fetches them):

Python (`python/caldera_re/dataset_summary.py`, runnable on the web page):

```python
"""The Caldera Re dataset at a glance: both demo tiers, every cedent.

Each cedent's year event loss table (YELT) is a committed CSV under
public/data/, one file per tier. load_cedent(name, n_trials) reads one; this
script reads all ten and prints what each holds. Losses and TIV are in $M.
"""

import pandas as pd

from caldera_re.data import load_cedent

CEDENTS = ['suncoast', 'pacific', 'baltica', 'atlas', 'trident']
TIERS = [20, 1000]

rows = []
for n in TIERS:
    for name in CEDENTS:
        y = load_cedent(name, n)
        occ = y.drop_duplicates(['trial_id', 'timestamp', 'event_id'])
        rows.append({
            'tier': n,
            'cedent': name,
            'rows': len(y),
            'occurrences': len(occ),
            'events': y['event_id'].nunique(),
            'trials with rows': f"{y['trial_id'].nunique()} of {n}",
            'perils': ' '.join(sorted(y['peril'].unique())),
            'mean trial loss': y['loss'].sum() / n,   # over all n trials, event-free ones included
        })

table = pd.DataFrame(rows)
for n in TIERS:
    t = table[table['tier'] == n].drop(columns='tier')
    print(f"\n{n}-trial tier")
    print(t.to_string(index=False, formatters={'mean trial loss': '{:,.1f}M'.format}))
```

## Where Caldera Re appears

| Chapter                                    | What's introduced                                              |
| ------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------- |
| [Foundations](https://reinsurance.dev/foundations/)                | Company profile, market position, business relationships       |
| [Analytics Toolkit](https://reinsurance.dev/toolkit/)         | Trial data, loss distributions, risk metrics                   |
| [Financial Modelling](https://reinsurance.dev/financial-modelling/)   | Term-by-term contract compositions, worked loss transformations |
| [Applications](https://reinsurance.dev/applications/)                     | Risk profiling, standalone program pricing, portfolio analytics |