Interview: Margarida Torres Gama on the challenges facing the insurance and reinsurance sector in Portugal

Amid new regulatory obligations, emerging risks and the advance of artificial intelligence, the insurance and reinsurance sector is today going through one of the most significant periods of transformation in decades. Margarida Torres Gama, Partner at Morais Leitão and Co-Head of the Insurance and Pension Funds team, spoke to us about what this evolution means in practice.

1. What recent regulatory change has had the greatest impact on the practice of insurance and reinsurance law in Portugal?

The sector's regulatory landscape has been marked by a series of developments with cross-cutting impact.

For example, the 2019 transposition of the Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD) and the subsequent publication of its delegated regulations introduced new obligations regarding pre-contractual information, product suitability for clients and training requirements, which required a thorough review of internal processes and distribution agreements, while also creating new and interesting possibilities regarding the role of insurance intermediaries.

More recently, the DORA Regulation introduced digital operational resilience requirements that directly affect insurers and reinsurers, particularly with regard to ICT risk management and relationships with third-party service providers.

Finally, the European AI Act, whose implementation is being phased in, poses new legal challenges for the sector, particularly in the use of AI systems in underwriting, pricing and claims management.

In recent years, these pieces of legislation have generated a considerable volume of work, as they have forced companies in the sector to rethink their operational and contractual models.

2. The insurance sector is increasingly exposed to emerging risks such as cybersecurity and climate change. How has the law kept pace with this evolution?

The sector has adapted to this evolution, mainly through the creation and design of new products themselves: cyber insurance, parametric products linked to climate events, pandemic coverage. These types of coverage often do not fully fit within traditional legal concepts of insurance, nor do their underlying risks fit neatly into pre-existing prudential models.

Parametric insurance is a good example: its indemnity mechanism, based on automatic triggering upon verification of an objective event (parameter), such as a rainfall or seismic intensity index, raises complex legal questions around the concept of insurable interest, the indemnity principle and compensable damage, none of which existing legislation was specifically designed to address.

This need to reconcile product innovation with the legal framework is, in my opinion, one of the most stimulating and demanding areas of legal practice today.

3. How will artificial intelligence change the sector in the coming years, from a legal standpoint?

Artificial intelligence is already changing the sector, the question is how quickly the law can keep up.

From a legal standpoint, there are two main areas of change: on one hand, the use of AI models in underwriting and pricing, which raises issues related to algorithmic discrimination and transparency in automated decisions; on the other, claims management using AI, which brings up discussions around liability and the policyholder's right to a reasoned explanation of decisions.

The European AI Act has introduced a cross-cutting regulatory framework that will have direct implications for this sector, and a significant increase in litigation and interpretative questions related to the use of AI in insurance is expected in the coming years.

4. What distinguishes the Portuguese approach to insurance and reinsurance within the European context?

Portugal shares with the other EU Member States a broadly harmonised regulatory framework in this sector, Solvency II, IDD, DORA, IRRD, which ensures a high degree of uniformity in prudential and distribution matters.

Portugal's main distinctive feature lies largely in the general regulation of insurance contracts, set out in dedicated, non-harmonised legislation through the 2008 Legal Framework for Insurance Contracts. While most of the contractual principles it contains are common to various other civil law and common law jurisdictions, there are, for example, specific rules for group insurance that have no direct parallel in many other jurisdictions and which shape how products are structured and the roles of the various parties involved (insurer, policyholder, intermediary) in their distribution and operation.

Alongside this, Portugal has a solid legal tradition and extensive case law in this area, and the market benefits from genuine proximity between operators and the regulator, which facilitates dialogue and the anticipation of regulatory issues.

5. What does this recognition at the Women in Business Law Awards EMEA 2026 mean to you?

This distinction is a great honour, but I see it, above all, as a collective recognition of the team I work with every day, and of Morais Leitão, for having sought and invested in a pioneering presence in providing differentiated legal services to the insurance sector.
It is equally a recognition of our Clients, who over the years have entrusted us with highly demanding matters and constantly challenge us to find innovative legal solutions for situations of great complexity and market impact, pushing us to serve them with ever-greater quality.