Insurance design: designing policy's contractual provisions and dispute resolution methods
The ongoing deregulation of the insurance market in Brazil is enlarging the scope of contractual freedom to policyholders and insurers.
The contractual design of policies becomes routine and, together with it, new ways to settle insurance disputes became reality. From mediation to binding questionnaires, from arbitration to “procedural contracts”, the resolution of conflicts in the insurance market becomes dependent on the constant strategic decisions by the contract parties.
Additionally, in view of those expressive innovations in insurance policy arrangements, lawyers now reach out to court grounding their cases on new paradigms of legal reasoning. To the extent that case law, centered for years around consumer protection legislation, is bound for incremental changes in its direction. The principles of the general theory of contacts and insurance in private law will definitely become enrooted in the judicial decision-making.
In the section Trends and Developments Brazil of the Chambers & Partners de 2021/2022 publication, the partner to SABZ Advogados, Paulo Doron de Araujo e Pedro Souza, with the associates Alberto Barbosa Jr. and Rodolfo Mazzini, frame and detailed this novel moment for the insurance law practice in Brazil.
We hope the text will inspire all the parties involved, both private and public, in such a dynamic market as the insurance industry.