I benefici di mutualità nelle mutue assicuratrici: il caso Reale Mutua

This thesis aims to analyse insurance companies in mutual form by giving a brief overview of the role they play in a modern economic system and the market share they hold. It then goes on to define what is a benefit of mutuality, how the concept was born and why companies give it to your members. The thesis seeks to give an overview of these benefits of the amounts and how they are distributed in the various branches, about profits and corporate assets in the history of Reale Mutua. The process of determining the amount and the criteria for allocating to members and the creation of the mutual working group and its objectives are analysed. In addition, where possible, it also aims to find and compare the benefits provided by Reale with those of other European mutuals that are part of the AMICE association. Finally, the substantial differences between the dividends of the joint stock company and the mutual benefits provided by Real Mutua are compared. The comparison is made both from a tax point of view, thus analysing the tax treatment (of dividends and benefits) in which on the one hand the companies that issue them and on the other the subjects that receive them, and from an economic point of view, observing the impact they have on their respective corporate structures, taking into account that Reale as a mutual society does not resort to debt capital. The method used to carry out these surveys is to analyze the corporate balance sheets of 8 European mutual companies and 8 of the major insurance companies (by size and share of the world market) in the form of a public company. This analysis starts from the historical archive of Reale Mutua from which I extrapolated all the data ranging from 1949 to the present day concerning society; for the remaining companies, the data comes from the balance sheets available on their respective web pages and goes from 2010 to the present day. The results highlight the importance of mutual insurance in an economic system as it acts as a stabiliser for the economy and contributes to an increase in diversification and competition in the market with obvious benefits for policyholders. Moreover, we argue that mutual benefit and equity dividends, are different in nature.