On January 16, 1974, the Compagnie Internationnale d’Assurances et de Réassurances (CIAR) was incorporated in Brussels by ASSUBEL (Belgium), AUG (the Netherlands) and MAPFRE (Spain). Each company invested what amounted to 50 million Belgian francs at the time, and in MAPFRE’s case, the transaction was significant in that it represented the Group’s first investment outside of Spain.
This investment in CIAR was the first chapter in the ongoing story of international expansion that has positioned MAPFRE today as the largest Spanish-owned insurer in the world, the leading multinational insurance group in Latin America and one of the Top 10 European groups by premium volume, with 31,000 employees worldwide and a presence in around 40 countries.
A string of other investments followed, mainly across Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s. The acquisition of the Commerce Group in 2008 marked MAPFRE’s entry into the US market, which was followed by purchases in Turkey, Germany, and Italy, and the opening of reinsurance offices in Southeast Asia.
MAPFRE’s investment in CIAR at the time, together with ASSUBEL and AGO, sought “to promote coordinated coinsurance and reinsurance actions among the world’s main countries.” The CIAR operation remains active today, now as a pool integrated in MAPFRE RE, in which 11 other companies from Europe and the United States participate and managed by the Spanish reinsurer.
