Agroseguro (Spanish combined agricultural insurance system)

Agroseguro is the managing company of Spain's seguros agrarios combinados system: a single technical desk for all of the country's subsidized agricultural policies. The framework sits in Law 87/1978 of December 28, 1978, a product of the Moncloa Pacts. It created ENESA, the public body that sets the insurance plan each year and pays the public share of premiums. Agroseguro was formed in 1980 by the insurers that agreed to join the pool. Each takes a fixed percentage of the whole portfolio, and Agroseguro writes the terms, rates, adjusts and pays claims. The autonomous communities add their own subsidy. Public reinsurance comes as a stop loss: the Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros takes losses above a loss ratio threshold, and the private market completes the program. The forerunner was a 1973 pool on hail and fire for wheat. The system has a rare asset: a single claims database for over forty years, crop by crop and municipality by municipality. It also has a limit. In 2023, claims hit a record 1,241 million euros, up 56% on 2022, including 496 million for drought alone. The 2017 to 2023 period is the costliest in the system's 43 years. The pool absorbs these shocks because the tail goes to the Consorcio. Not to be confused with the Consorcio itself, which covers extraordinary catastrophes on nonagricultural property.