Cedant or cedent is the policyholder under a reinsurance contract. It is an insurance firm that partially or wholly transfers the risk it has underwritten to a reinsurer (reinsurance firm). It agrees to pay out a percentage of the original premium (collected under the original insurance contract).

Simply put, a cedant is an insurer that buys protection for the insurance risk it has assumed, by means of reinsurance, sharing the risk with another firm. Cedant is a term used in the insurance industry to imply an insurer seeking insurance from other providers.

Cedent, in law, is the party transferring a claim in the act called cession. Originally, it is a Latin term in Civil Law that refers to the “assignor” in assignment (law). Cedant is an alternative spelling of cedent. Both spellings are used in English, but it’s probably easier to argue for the spelling “cedent”, based on the etymological origins: in Latin cedens (stem cedent-) is used as the present-participle form of the verb cedo (infinitive cedere). It is defined as the anybody who assigns property to another. The spelling “cedant” could be supported by reference to French cédant, which is the present-participle form of the verb céder, while cédant is the verb form.