Preface
Dear Clients and Partners,
We hope that everyone has gone through this first phase of coping with COVID-19 pandemic in the best possible way, keeping comfortable, staying safe and being well with your Families.
It has been a few months since the pandemic outbreak arrived in Brazil and in South America.
There was a lot of expectation about how everything would work as long as there was social distance.
Unfortunately, there was no surprise with regard to some developments beyond the spread of the disease, such the very social distancing measures, the war-like death toll recorded, the immense pressure on the health system standing up, the largest global recession in history and job losses at an unprecedented pace
On the other hand, statutes production by the Government in general and specifically by public government agencies such as Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM), Brazilian Insurance Supervisor (SUSEP) and the Central Bank, among others authorities, continued regularly. Indeed, there was even a rise in the statutory and administrative rules enactment.
For our part, in addition to all the impacts of this perfect storm, we decided to wait a little longer to release this newsletter so that it would be useful to present an overview of measures imposed in that period to combat the pandemic. For this reason, we have prepared a newsletter covering the months from March to June and, separately, a list of preventive, sanitary, economic and governmental measures exclusively related to the pandemic outbreak. We will, after this Newsletter, regularly send our monthly Newsletter. The next one will be the July Newsletter.
The result is, regardless of agreeing or not with the adopted direction, a comprehensive, in-depth overview of a period of great legal and regulatory refitment, which reveal in the governmental intelligence activity, with regard to statutory and administrative rules enactment, a surprisingly fast and efficient adaptation to remote work and the authorities willingness not to reduce the pace of implementing legal structural changes while it manages the pandemic impacts
Have a great reading time!
Kind regards,
Santos Bevilaqua Advogados
Insurance And Open Supplementary Social Security
1)GOVERNMENT REVOKES PROVISIONAL PRESIDENTIAL DECREE - MP THAT DEREGULATED THE PROFESSION OF BROKERS
The MP no. 955/20 revoked MP no. 905/19, which had created the Green and Yellow Employment Agreement and promoted a real labor mini-reform and, besides that, had revoked the main existent rules about insurance brokerage.
In fact, the MP no. 905/19 completely revoked the Law no. 4594/64; and subitem "e" of art. 8, item XII of art. 32, item VIII of art. 34, art. 122 to art. 125, art. 127, and art. 128 of Decree-Law no. 73/66. As a result, the insurance broker's profession has ceased to be a regulated profession, to become an activity that can be performed by anyone regardless of registration and without the direct supervision of SUSEP.
It was a paradigmatic change, which would have had profound effects on the structure of the Brazilian insurance sector
Once MP no. 905/19 was revoked, again SUSEP is responsible for inspecting and regulating the profession, and the exercise of the insurance brokerage once again requires legal qualification and registration with SUSEP.
2)National Council of Private Insurance - CNSP RESOLUTION No. 387, OF 6/9/2020 AND Private Insurance Superintendency - SUSEP CIRCULAR No. 606, OF 6/19/2020
CNSP Resolution no. 387/2020, published in the DOU of 6/10/2020, revokes the sole paragraph and the head provision of art. 14 of Annex I to CNSP Resolution no, 330/2015.
In practice, the specific rule on Lloyd´s was eliminated, but the same rule was included in SUSEP Circular no. 606, which now expressly provides that an admitted reinsurer may request that its registration be changed to occasional reinsurer.
It is worth noting that the possibility of registry changes already existed before, but this topic has generated a series of recent discussions. This is because the interest in this possibility has increased a lot, due to the change in the limits of risk assignment for eventual reinsurers
Note: In fact, Decree no. 10167/19 removed all the all the advantages of the admitted registration over the eventual registration, making it interesting only for reinsurers domiciled in tax havens.
3)CNSP RESOLUTION No. 386, OF 6/9/2020
CNSP Resolution no. 386/2020, published in the DOU of 6/10/2020, revokes a series of CNSP Resolutions.
Fifty-one resolutions have been revoked, of which the oldest one dated 1967 and the most recent, 2017
4)CNSP RESOLUTION No. 385, OF 6/9/2020
CNSP Resolution no. 385/2020, published in the DOU of 6/10/2020, provides for the coverages that the insurers may offer to the closed supplementary social security entities (EFPCs).
This resolution updates and consolidates the rules for the EFPCs to contract coverage.
5)CNSP RESOLUTION No. 384, OF 6/9/2020 AND SUSEP CIRCULAR No. 607, OF 6/19/2020
CNSP Resolution no. 384/2020, published in the DOU of 6/10/2020, addresses the capitalization transactions and the modalities, preparation, operation, and sales of capitalization bonds.
The new resolution brings greater transparency to the consumer and clearly expands the financial aid to charity institutions, also with the creation of a specific modality for such purpose.
SUSEP Circular no. 607/2020, published in the DOU of 6/22/2020, revokes SUSEP Circular no. 569/2018 and some articles of SUSEP Circulars no. 576/2018 and no. 582/2018, which address the capitalization activities.
6)Operation Registration System - SRO
CNSP Resolution no. 383 of 3/20/2020 provides that the insurance, open supplementary social security, capitalization, and reinsurance operations must be recorded to ensure transparency to the market and the consumer
Initially, this measure, which depends on a supplementary regulation, will apply to performance bonds and will be applied to other segments progressively.
It is an ambitious project. The registration, when and if implemented in full, will change how the insurance, pension plan, and capitalization contracts will be drafted and made available to the consumers.
The major problem of this project is the cost, which is not clear as yet. Also, no explanation was provided on how the registration will be made viable for all types of products and contracts.
Anyway, additional measures are being adopted in parallel.
As a matter of fact, the board of the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM), at a meeting held on 3/10/2020, by a unanimous vote and following the conclusions of the Superintendence of Relations with the Market and Intermediaries (SMI), decided to authorize B3 to act as the body in charge of registering insurance, reinsurance, supplementary social security, and capitalization transactions.
For more information, click here.
B3 will be in the market as the entity in charge of registering insurance policies.
7)CNSP RESOLUTION No. 382, OF 3/4/2020
CNSP Resolution no. 382, of 3/4/.2020, establishes the principles to guide the conduct practices that the insurance companies, capitalization companies, open supplementary social security entities, and intermediaries must adopt in their relations with clients and SUSEP's use of the hidden client to monitor the supervised entities, as defined in the Resolution.
This is a paradigm rule that will change the operations of the insurance sector in view of the transparency criteria that it introduces.
Originally published 07 August, 2020
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