One of the longest -serving CEOs says goodbye: Jos Baeten van ASR will retire next year

After 45 years with (more or less) the same employer, of which seventeen years of age as the highest boss, Jos Baeten will say goodbye to insurer ASR next year. His intended successor is Ingrid de Swart, the current operational director. That the company from Utrecht announced this Monday morning.

Baeten (1958) came into the service of the City of Rotterdam Insurance in 1980, the oldest insurer in Europe, which is still living in the letters of ASR. At the end of the 1990s he was given a first management position: at the city of Rotterdam, in the middle of the process of merging with the Amersfoortse (which the A is originally found in the name).

If ASR and the insurance branch of Fortis merge in 2000 – and the A for Amev will be faced with, Baeten will join the management group’s management group. As the highest boss (since 2005), Baeten is experiencing the 2008 credit crisis, in which Fortis ASR is sucked into as part of Fortis. After the rescue of the Dutch part of Fortis and ABN AMRO, the insurance part of it will be cut off in 2009. Baeten has been there since then Chief Executive Officer by. In 2016, the State successfully brought the insurer to the stock exchange.

Merging is a common thread in Baeten’s career – just like that is a common thread in the insurance world as a whole. That taking over and merging took place mainly in the Netherlands: after the Fortis debacle, ASR concentrated under Baeten’s leadership on consolidation in the Netherlands – where competitors such as NN and Aegon also looked a lot on the international market. “Abroad is for vacation,” Baeten said several times. Two years ago he perhaps won the biggest hit: all Aegon Netherlands activities were taken over. To properly guide that merger process, Baeten accepted an appointment period of three years once more in 2023. It ends in May 2026.

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