Reinsurance

In ordinary German die Priorität is what it looks like: the thing that comes first, as in Das hat für uns höchste Priorität. In a reinsurance treaty the same word names a sum of money. Die Priorität of an excess-of-loss cover is the part of each loss the primary insurer carries itself before the reinsurer pays anything, which English calls the retention or the attachment point. The two senses never meet, and the sentence tells them apart. The everyday one is given or granted, etwas Priorität einräumen. The technical one takes a figure and is raised or lowered at renewal: eine Priorität von fünf Millionen, die Priorität wurde angehoben. Above it runs die Haftstrecke, the band the reinsurer answers for. Hear urgency in that clause and you have misread the one number that decides who pays.