Focus on recent challenges of the insurance industry

Since the social revolution in October 2019 and the 2020 pandemic, new scenarios have appeared that accelerated the implementation of relevant changes, meaning a huge challenge for the insurance industry in Chile.

These circumstances deeply affected the market, increasing the appearance of new laws, along with more rigorous supervision from more sophisticated and specialised regulators. Between the new dispositions that appeared as disruptive changes for the market, we should point out the laws that allowed the payment of a 10% of life annuities, and the restriction of the distribution of dividends under new standards of patrimonial fortitude. Moreover, other dispositions seeming to disrupt the market include the establishment of an exceptional legal regime that affected the course of court proceedings, labour dispositions forcing the implementation of telecommuting, safe return to face-to-face work, and the elimination of tax exemption for life insurance.

All these changes have made the Mapfre legal team abandon the paradigm of being a legal partner inside the organisation, becoming an essential and transversal area, encompassing from strategical definitions to tactics for the development of the company business. The focus has been to work completely involved in the different areas of the organisation, advising and actively intervening in relevant commercial, regulatory and strategical topics, under the principles of company values.

This has been possible through training a growing team of lawyers and analysts in the development of the business, who have led the different areas of the company since the beginning and gestation of a new project, all the way to its implementation, which has made the team valuable for their transversal work.

The legal area that I proudly lead, has a diverse team made of professionals of different ages and highly trained in the different branches of the business where Mapfre develops. This highly technical focus, the incorporation of new technology, including components of artificial intelligence, the management and coordination with external consultants, and the deep compromise, has made possible for the legal team to go further than a standard legal service, becoming a fundamental area within the organisation.

The vertiginous evolution of the industry, which many times is faster than legislation can regulate, pushes us to permanently train, innovate, review and improve processes and embrace new technologies in order to work and anticipate in the best possible way, the challenge of advising the organisation in a more and more defiant environment.