The largest IPSS in Portugal – O Jornal Económico
Associação Mutualista Montepio Geral is the largest Portuguese Social Institution, with more than 600,000 members over its more than 180 years of existence.
Mutualista, as it is known, is in the electoral process to choose who will manage it for the next four years, with a race being disputed by four lists, after the last election won by Tomás Correia.
In recent years, Montepio has suffered from its own transformation process. In almost two centuries of history, this association-based Portuguese institution carried, in its original model, a Mutual Association and a Caixa Económica Attached.
It was only with the publication of DL 190/2015, which is the new Legal Regime of Caixas Econômicas, that the institutions Associação Mutualista and Caixa Econômica were separated, designating the latter as Caixa Econômica Bancária, and later specifying its personality legal entity in the configuration of a public limited company.
But not Mutualista. This is just a Private Institution of Social Solidarity (IPSS), which has around 30 million assets, and has a unique social support role as causes of solidarity in Portugal. In addition to the financial effort that Associação Mutualista continues to make in the capitalization of its Caixa Económica, which has capitalized over 600 million euros in recent years, without resorting to any help from the State.
Its role in our society is therefore appreciable, because even in times of crisis it remains as institutions that are Portuguese, that are ours, and that are available to activate national policies. And all the more nobler the closer it is to institutions with social ends.
And it is these concerns that a bank manager, with proven evidence in his professional activity such as Dr. Pedro Gouveia Alves, a man of the house for over twenty years, profoundly knowledgeable about the mutualist world, who sees myself to lead this institution, that I’m a member.
The List led by Pedro Gouveia Alves is a list of serious and competent people experienced in the management of the social economy, cadres who have mostly been in the group in the last decade, and I understand that they meet as conditions for a new affirmation and mutualist hope.
This Mutualista, which is the largest IPSS in Portugal, must refocus on people and civil society, and refocus on economic growth and social development.
It will be up to each of its 600,000 members to choose, in internal democracy, entrusting their vote. Mine will be in Pedro Gouveia Alves, because knowingly, I believe in serious and true work, with a sense of responsibility in the mutualist cause, and because I know that he will make every effort to stabilize and elevate the largest Portuguese association.
Because, after all, the Associação Mutualista is ours. And being ours, it’s our obligation to support your future.