Jesús Huerta de Soto is a Spanish economics professor known for his anarcho-liberal positions and for being the ideological reference of the president of Argentina, Javier Milei.
But Huerta de Soto is much more.
He is a multimillionaire manager thanks to his stake in España SA, Compañía Nacional de Seguros, an insurance company that he presides over.
He inherited the company, and the position, from his father, Jesús Huerta Ballester, who in turn had inherited it from his grandfather, Jesús Huerta Peña, who founded the company in 1928. Although it is not a well-known insurance company, it has been hoarding valuable real estate assets and the fortune of the Huerta de Soto family exceeds 150 million euros.
They are not a unique case.
In Spain, where banking giants such as VidaCaixa (subsidiary of CaixaBank), listed as Mapfre, mutual companies such as Mutua Madrileña and multinationals such as AXA, Generali, Zurich or Allianz compete head-to-head in the insurance sector, there are a dozen companies where a family continues to have a specific weight in its shareholders, in its management, or in both areas.
Not only that.
“Large international groups are suffering from this tough competition and reducing market share in the last decade, due to the strength of 100% Spanish insurers,” explains the president of one of the 10 largest companies in the country.
The most paradigmatic case of these family insurance groups is that of Catalana Oeste, a publicly traded firm.
Its top executive is Hugo Serra, CEO and vice president.
In 2022 he took over from his father, José María Serra Farre who, in turn, had replaced his grandfather Jesús Serra y Santamans as president.
He had founded Seguros Oeste in 1947. Over the three generations the group's growth has been exponential, becoming the world leader in surety insurance (they control Crédito y Caución, as well as Atradius), and having carried out a trail of purchases ( Plus Ultra, Nortehispana, Seguros Bilbao, Grupo Mémora...).
The family has an estimated wealth of around 1.5 billion euros, which places them among the 25 richest in Spain.
The main position is 62% of the capital of Catalana Occidente.
Another Spanish insurer that is listed on the stock market and where a family has significant power is Línea Directa Aseguradora.
The company was founded by Jaime Botín, the brother of banker Emilio Botín, and who still maintains a 20% stake.
His son, Alfonso Botín-Sanz de Sautola, continues to hold the non-executive presidency.
The family has assets of around 1,400 million euros, but above all due to their participation in Bankinter, where they are also major shareholders.
Death insurance
As is the case in Línea Directa, most family insurers have chosen to separate ownership and management.
Andrés Romero, general director of Santalucía Seguros - a leader in death insurance and also owned by the founders - considers that this has been one of the keys to the success of the group, which turned 100 years old in 2022.
“The shareholder families of Santalucía have always been very clear: an insurance company cannot be managed through intuition, but rather through analytical, technical and actuarial rigor.”
The group led by Romero generates income of more than 3.5 billion euros each year, and employs 8,500 people.
For a decade they have entered the investment and pension fund business with force.
The three family branches that control the company have an accumulated equity of about 2.5 billion euros.
The presidency of Santalucía is held by Carlos Javier Álvarez Navarro, whose family branch controls 33% of the group.
Santalucía's great historical competitor in death policies is Ocaso Seguros.
Here too a family is in charge.
Founded in 1920 by Ramón D'Ortega y Hervella;
This was succeeded by his daughter Isabel Castelo d'Ortega, and is now the granddaughter, Isabel Elena de Mandaluniz Castelo D'Ortega.
Forbes magazine estimates that the 95-year-old matriarch's assets exceed 1.4 billion euros.
Isabel Castelo D'Ortega, president of Ocaso Seguros, awarded by the Spanish Association Against CancerImage from AECC
The list of mid-sized family insurers is even larger.
GES, a group that also controls Nacional de Reaseguros and Almudena Seguros, is owned by the Sunyer Sendra family, which has assets of around 360 million euros.
Its corporate headquarters is adjacent to the Congress of Deputies.
Other cases of succession at the head of the family business are that of Patria Hispana Seguros, whose president Pedro Ramognino Miraved is the grandson of the founder, Pedro Ramognino Finocchio.
Or that of Preventiva Seguros, whose president, Antonio Fernández-Huerga, is the youngest son, and only son, of the founder Arsenio Fernández-Huerga.
“Some time ago there were seven members of the family working in the company,” he explained in an interview.
For more than a decade, the recurring theme in the insurance sector is the need for a concentration process.
In Spain there are 200 operational insurance companies, according to data from the General Directorate of Insurance.
The only relevant mergers in recent years have been those derived from the reorganization of the banking sector (large groups, such as CaixaBank, have been absorbing the insurance companies of the banks they were left with) and some operations of international groups, such as the sale of Caser to the Swiss group Helvetia or Liberty Seguros to Generali.
Enrique Sanz Fernández-Lomana, president of the Mutual Association of Lawyers, explains that “if there have not been more operations it is because the insurance companies, although small, are profitable and well capitalized, so the owners or directors do not have many incentives to sell.”
Special mention should be made of mutual funds where the main executive responsibility has passed from parents to children.
That is the case of AMA Seguros, the mutual insurance company for health professionals.
Two weeks ago, the insurance company's board of directors appointed Raquel Murillo as general director.
Her father, Diego Murillo, has been president of the group for more than 20 years.
Something similar happens in Divina Pastora, a mutual insurance company founded to support domestic workers and directed by Armando Nieto, son of the previous president, also called Armando Nieto.
His sister Pilar Nieto Ranero was also corporate deputy general director of the same group.
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