| Cable landing station | A coastal facility at which a subsea telecommunications cable comes ashore and connects to terrestrial networks. Landing stations can create concentration risk because several cable systems may rely on the same location. |
| Cable-repair vessel | A specialist ship equipped to locate, recover, splice and restore damaged subsea cables. The limited number and availability of these vessels can significantly delay repairs. |
| Captive | An insurance company established by a corporation or group primarily to insure its own risks. |
| Cascading loss | A loss that spreads through interconnected systems, infrastructure or supply chains. For example, damage to a cable could disrupt cloud services, which could then affect payments, logistics and manufacturing. |
| Casualty insurance | Insurance primarily covering legal liabilities, bodily injury and related losses rather than direct physical damage to the insured’s own property. |
| Catastrophe, or CAT | A major event causing multiple significant losses. Examples include hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, wildfires and large-scale acts of terrorism. |
| Causal connection | The legally sufficient relationship between an event and the resulting damage. In a war-exclusion dispute, the issue may be whether war was sufficiently connected with the action that caused the damage. |
| Causation | The factual and legal analysis of what caused a loss. A claim may involve several possible causes, such as negligence, sabotage, cyber activity, war or a defensive military response. |
| Cedant or ceding company | An insurer that transfers part of its risk to a reinsurer. |
| Cession | The risk transferred by an insurer to a reinsurer. |
| Chokepoint | A narrow geographical or operational passage through which a disproportionate amount of shipping, energy or data traffic must pass. Examples include narrow seas, straits and concentrated cable-landing locations. |
| Civil commotion | A substantial disturbance involving a group of people and a degree of violence or disorder beyond an isolated event. The precise policy definition determines whether an incident qualifies. |
| Civil standard of proof | The degree of proof generally required in a civil dispute. It is commonly expressed as the balance of probabilities or more likely than not, although the test varies by jurisdiction. |
| Claims leakage | Claim payments or expenses that might have been avoided through more effective claims investigation, management, negotiation or recovery. |
| Covert action | An activity conducted so that the identity or involvement of its sponsor remains concealed. |
| Combined ratio | A key measure of underwriting profitability calculated as: Loss ratio + expense ratio. Below 100% generally indicates an underwriting profit. Above 100% generally indicates an underwriting loss. |
| Commutation | An agreement settling and terminating all present and future obligations under an insurance or reinsurance contract in exchange for an agreed payment. Commutations are common in runoff business. |
| Concentration risk | The risk that many insured interests depend on the same location, supplier, service provider, technology or infrastructure. |
| Concurrent causes | Two or more causes contributing to the same loss. How the policy responds depends on the wording and the applicable legal rules concerning multiple causes. |
| Coverage | The protection provided by an insurance policy. Coverage is determined by the insuring clause, definitions, conditions, endorsements, exclusions, deductibles and limits. |
| Coverage trigger | The event or circumstance that activates potential coverage under a policy. |
| Critical infrastructure | Assets, facilities and systems essential to the functioning of society or the economy. Examples include communications, energy, transport, water, healthcare and financial systems. |
| Cyber operation | The use of computer systems to disrupt, deny, degrade, manipulate or destroy data, systems or services. Some insurance clauses use a narrower definition requiring the operation to have been conducted by or on behalf of a state. |
| Cyber-war exclusion | A clause excluding specified losses arising from war or state-linked cyber operations. Modern clauses may include detailed definitions and mechanisms for determining attribution. |
| D&O insurance | Directors and Officers Liability insurance. It protects directors and officers against certain claims arising from alleged wrongful acts in the management of an organization. |
| Dark fleet or shadow fleet | An informal term for vessels operating through opaque ownership, registration, insurance or trading arrangements, often in connection with efforts to avoid sanctions or regulatory scrutiny. The expression does not have a single legal definition and should therefore be used cautiously. |
| Deductible | The amount of an insured loss that must be borne by the insured before the policy begins to respond. |
| Defence costs | Legal fees, expert fees and related expenses incurred in investigating, defending or resolving a claim or coverage dispute. Depending on the policy, defence costs may be paid inside or outside the policy limit. |
| Development | The change in the estimated value of a claim or group of claims over time. A claim may develop upward or downward as new information becomes available. |
| Direct or indirect causation | Policy language describing how closely a cause must be connected to the resulting damage. Wording such as “directly or indirectly occasioned by” may establish a broader connection than language limited to losses directly caused by an event. |
| Drop down | A situation in which a higher insurance layer responds at a lower level because the underlying layer is unavailable, exhausted or unable to pay. Whether drop-down coverage exists depends on the wording. |
| Earned premium | The portion of the premium corresponding to the part of the insurance period that has already expired. |
| Electrical interconnector | A high-voltage cable connecting the electricity systems of two regions or countries. Subsea interconnectors allow electricity to be transferred across national borders. |
| EPL insurance | Employment Practices Liability insurance. It may cover claims involving alleged discrimination, harassment, retaliation or wrongful termination. |
| Evidence preservation | The process of protecting documents, electronic records, vessel data, physical material and other evidence that may later be required in litigation, arbitration or recovery proceedings. |
| Excess layer | A layer of insurance or reinsurance attaching above another layer. For example, a USD 20 million excess layer attaching above USD 10 million responds after the first USD 10 million of the relevant loss has been absorbed. |
| Excess of Loss, or XOL | Non-proportional reinsurance under which the reinsurer pays losses above an agreed attachment point, up to an agreed limit. For example, USD 10 million excess of USD 20 million means the reinsurer may pay up to USD 10 million after the loss exceeds USD 20 million. |
| Exclusion | A policy provision removing specified events, causes, losses or circumstances from coverage. |
| Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ | A marine zone generally extending up to 200 nautical miles from a coastal state’s baseline. Within its EEZ, the coastal state has specified rights concerning natural resources and certain economic activities. An EEZ is not the same as territorial waters. |
| Exposure | The possibility that an insured person, asset, activity or portfolio may suffer loss. |
| Expropriation | The taking of private property by a state or public authority, generally for a public, political or strategic purpose. |
