Brazilian Government repeals Provisional Measure that deregulated the insurance broker profession

On April 20, 2020, the Federal Government published the Provisional Measure No. 955, which revoked the Provisional Measure No. 905 of November 11, 2019, founder of the “Green and Yellow Contract” and responsible for deregulating the insurance broker’s profession.

Such measure had brought enormous changes to the insurance broker’s profession and activity, since it revoked the legal provisions that regulated them (Law No. 4594/64 and Decree-Law No. 73/66), and replaced the state supervision of the profession by the self-regulation.

While the Congress did not confirm the measure, SUSEP had recognized IBRACOR as the self-regulatory entity of insurance brokerage activity.

However, with such revocation, the inspection and regulation of the profession had returned being SUSEP’s attribution, and insurance brokers are once again subject to prior registration with the autarchy for the exercise of the activity.

With this, SUSEP itself restarted, on April 22, 2020, the process of registering insurance brokers, and even created an online and free system to automate and simplify the procedure, which can be accessed through this link.

In addition, on April 24, 2020, the autarchy issued the Letter No. 602/2020, providing on the procedure that must be adopted for the free re-registration of brokers and brokerage companies. All professionals and companies, by means of a broker already re-registered, must re-register until July 31, 2020, according to the guidelines established in the electronic system, under penalty of suspension until the registration is regularized.

SUSEP also emphasized the need for constant updating of data in the new system whenever there are any changes, reassuring its right to suspend any registration of brokers and brokerage companies whenever the registered data presents any sort of diversion, which will last until the irregularity is resolved.

Even so, the future of the insurance broker profession is still uncertain, since the government itself has already stated that it intends to re-edit the Provisional Measure No. 905/2019 and forward it once again for the approval of the Congress, probably deregulating the profession again and bringing new instabilities and changes.

The Insurance & Reinsurance team will follow the development of this discussion, being available to provide any clarifications on the subject.