Search

This paper aims to demonstrate that the insurance industry -especially oligopolistic companies and those which belong to financial groups -benefited from the economic crisis situation of the last 25 years. This was possible due to the confluence of several factors: 1) deregulation policies -the opening and privatization process that favored the participation in and control of mainly foreign, big capital -in the insurance market; 2) fiscal policies -including the contraction of public spending and the sale of state-owned corporations, as well as high interest rate monetary policies, accompanied by the overvaluation of the Mexican peso -precipitated two phenomena in the insurance industry: the orientation of insurance companies towards capital markets in order to negotiate securities in view of the domestic market's contraction, and greater competition and devaluation of companies to be acquired by foreign and national oligopolistic capital, and 3) the 1994-1995 crisis, which led to an accelerated process of transfer of the control and ownership of operating insurance corporations: from the concentration and domination of national capital to the control of foreign capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]