Freedom to Define Membership in a Mutual Insurance Company

A mutual insurance society is one of the basic forms of conducting insurance activity. It is characterized by a very wide range of options which its founders and subsequently entitled members have in order to choose the organizational and systemic model of operation, to change it in the course of business, to define the concept of membership, to create various categories of members and provide them with different rights and duties, to determine the powers of statutory bodies, and, above all, to apply the method of mutuality. The Insurance and Reinsurance Activity Act regulates the basic legal framework of mutual companies, while referring quite a number of issues to the Polish Commercial Partnerships and Companies Code. This does not alter the fundamental principle on which the company's activity is based, namely that its articles of association play an extremely important role, which is much greater than in the case of public limited liability companies, and that members of a mutual insurance society enjoy considerable freedom to conduct business and categorize its members, which is unparalleled for other legal forms of business activity.

El Monte de Piedad de México: Su origen y desarrollo

Este artículo trata sobre la historia de Nacional Monte de Piedade, una de las mutuas más antiguas de México y que aún juega un papel importante en la oferta de crédito a los sectores más pobres de la sociedad. El artículo cubre los principales acontecimientos desde su fundación en 1775 hasta la primera década del siglo XXI. This article deals with the history of Monte de Piedad de México, one of the oldest mutual insurance companies in Mexico, which still plays an important role in offering credit to the poorest sectors of society. The article covers the main events from its founding in 1775 to the first decade of the 21st century.

Evolution of Culture on Patient Safety in the Clinical Setting of a Spanish Mutual Insurance Company: Observational Study between 2009 and 2017 Based on AHRQ Survey

Background: Patient safety (PS) is a key factor in reducing or even eradicating adverse incidents and events. Many health organizations promote strategies to improve PS, while also pointing out the importance of measuring it. For more than eight years, our institution has developed strategies focused on improving PS-culture among our personnel. The goal of this paper is to analyze the PS-culture between the years 2009 and 2017. Methods: A cross-sectional survey focused on PS, and developed by the American Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), was conducted in 2009 and in 2017 among all healthcare workers at Mutualia, anonymously and voluntarily. Results: The overall response rate was similar in both 2009 and 2017 (37.2% and 38.5%, respectively). The average rating obtained showed a significant improvement over the period (7.7 vs. 8.1; p < 0.05). Itemizing by question, the main strengths were found in management support, organizational learning and continuous improvement, and, especially, in teamwork. Regarding weaknesses, the two lowest scores were those which refer to the balance between clinical safety and workload and the freedom to question the decisions made by superiors. Conclusions: The results obtained from the PS-surveys show that the overall PS-culture in our institution has increased, suggesting that the strategies focused on the improvement of PS-culture were well adopted among our personnel. The overall score places Mutualia at similar levels to those reached by the AHRQ and Spanish National Health System.

Sharing the Risk

Insurance makes use of the law of large numbers to mitigate the effects of risks on individuals by allowing them to be shared collectively. Early insurance arrangements arose as friendly societies and mutual insurance companies. Marine insurance has a long history and remains a major insurance market. Fire insurance provides compensation in the face of a capricious and frightening risk, but also invites fraudulent claims. Increasing amounts of information provide challenges for insurance underwriting: can there be too much information? The principle of insurance is that of averaging out of independent risks, but when risks are not independent, as may be the case when it comes to climate change, is there still any role for insurance?

Incentive Mechanism Design for Distributed Autonomous Organizations Based on the Mutual Insurance Scenario

The rise of blockchain has led to discussions on new governance models and the cooperation of multiple participants. Due to the cognitive defects of the blockchain protocol in terms of intelligent contracts and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), it is often unclear as to how to make decisions about the evolution of blockchain applications. Many autonomous organizations, with the support of network technologies such as blockchain, blindly absorb members and expand the scale of the capital pool, while ignoring the cost advantage of traditional autonomous organizations based on social relations and mutual supervision to fight information asymmetry. In this context, this study analyzes the evolutionary trend of autonomous organizations and their members’ strategies under different policy environments. To this end, under the digital economy background, based on game theory, the evolutionary dynamics method, and the form of the mutual insurance organization, this study constructs an evolutionary dynamics model of distributed autonomous organizations. The results show that blind expansion without review aggravates the overall risk pool’s moral hazard, in the context of mutual insurance. Organizational strategies, such as risk pool splits, can effectively improve the risk pool’s operating performance and establish a benign competition elimination mechanism. Driven by cooperation efficiency and split supervision based on homogeneous clustering, the comprehensive application of the market elimination mechanism can effectively combat moral hazards, restrain the adverse effects of member flow, expand the living space of small- and medium-sized insurance organizations, curb the emergence of a large-scale monopoly risk pool, and improve market vitality. These conclusions and suggestions also apply to autonomous organizations based on social relations and mutual supervision. The results offer specific decision-making guidance and suggestions for the government, insurance companies, and risk management.

Influence of Sociodemographic, Economic and Employment-Related Factors on Sick Leave Due To Mental Illness. A Retrospective Study in an Industrialized Region in Southern Europe

(1) Background: This study identifies and analyzes those variables that may influence sick leave due to mental illness, based on a retrospective descriptive study of a mutual insurance company in the industrialized region of southern Europe (Catalonia). (2) Methods: All workers who were on sick leave due to mental illness during the period 2009-2019 were included in the study. The relationships between sick leave due to mental illness and social/employment-related and economical and demographic factors were analyzed using multivariate logistic regression and Cox regression model. (3) Results: The period studied included 34,764 workers. Anxious-depressive disorders account for 83.3% of the diagnosed mental disorders. The age cohorts between 30 and 50 years represent 60% of the affected workers. Highest income and high population density regions are the most affected. The levels of mental illness are higher in spring and summer. Professions related to manufacturing industry, automobile mechanics companies, the hospitality industry, education and healthcare and social service companies was more heavily affected. (4) Conclusions: Population density and GDP per capita, the age cohort, the season of the year, the type of payment, the type of contract, and the worker&rsquo;s business and profession can predict the appearance of sick leave due to mental illness. Mutual insurance companies should plan interventions to minimize these factors and avoid the socioeconomic consequences.

Fiscal Policy in Europe: Controversies over Rules, Mutual Insurance, and Centralization

We discuss the main fiscal policy issues in Europe, focusing on two that are at the core of the current debate. The first is that the government deficit and debt were, from the outset, the key objects of contention in the debate that led to the creation of the Eurozone, and they still are. The second issue is that a currency union implies the loss of a country-specific instrument, a national monetary policy. This puts a higher burden on fiscal policy as a tool to counteract shocks, a burden that might be even heavier now that the European Central Bank has arguably reached the Zero Lower Bound. Two obvious solutions are mutual insurance (or risk-sharing) amongst countries and a centralized stabilization policy. Yet both have been remarkably difficult to come by, especially due to political constraints. We review and discuss the relative merits of several proposals for increased insurance or centralization, or both. We conclude with an early discussion of the implications of the COVID-19 crisis for European fiscal policy reform and an assessment of the current fiscal measures.