A few years ago, deregulation of the financial markets was a byword for modernity. Today, however, it is considered to be the main cause of the global crisis. As a contribution to the new European order, Act 12/2010 amending the Accounts Auditing Act, the Securities Market Act and the revised text of the Spanish Public Limited Companies Act was published last summer in Spain. To comment on the new framework created by these Acts, TRÉBOL has Mr. José Manuel Muries, the Internal Audit General Manager of MAPFRE, S.A., who describes in his article how it affects insurers and insurance groups listed on the stock exchange.

In the same issue, Ana Luisa Villanueva, the Medical Director of Life, Health and Personal Accident business at MAPFRE RE, reanalyses the role of risk selection in this sector. New advances in medicine, diagnostics and genetics are opening up new possibilities for achieving a more appropriate assessment of insureds’ life expectancy and level of health. The advantages of greater clarity in questionnaires and in the reasons for the acceptance or refusal of risks are also set out.