BURNING COST RATIO

An insurance-industry calculation of excess losses divided by total subject premium. The burning cost ratio is an experience-based insurance-rating method commonly used in determining rates for excess of loss reinsurance, or the insurance that insurance companies buy to protect themselves against total claims that exceed their total premiums collected.

This method is strongly related to a type of statistics called ratio estimation.Calculation of the burning cost ratio is one of several rating methods and is simple and widely used, but requires lots of claims data for it to be accurate. Another type of experience-based insurance-rating method is the Monte Carlo simulation.