Risk management and reinsurance strategies in the Spanish insurance market (1880–1940)

Abstract

Reinsurance allows insurance companies to diversify their risks. However, from this original role, insurance companies have developed various reinsurance strategies in order to expand their market share. From the last decades of the nineteenth century to the 1940s, Spanish insurance companies used reinsurance in a largely unregulated context. This article analyses the reinsurance practices and their adaptation to the singularities of the Spanish market, namely: the difficulties for the consolidation of a core of pure reinsurers; the management of reinsurance in the internationalisation process; and the use of reinsurance by mutual societies to overcome their lack of equity capital.

Managing financial constraints: undercapitalization and underwriting capacity in Spanish fire insurance

“…The Bank of Spain's Studies Service noted this performance in the analysis of the balance of payments for 1931: in spite of the difficulties of measuring reinsurance operations, the Service calculated a net outflow abroad of more than five million pesetas; Gutiérrez González and Pons Pons, ‘Risk management’, p. 299.…”

“…9–10; Gutiérrez González, El control de divisas , pp. 25–6; Gutiérrez González and Pons Pons, ‘Risk management’, pp. 295–6.…”

“…Tortella et al., Historia del seguro , pp. 146–8; Gutiérrez González and Pons Pons, ‘Risk management’, pp. 296–7.…”