The National Agency for Supplementary Health (ANS) has recently put in public consultation draft normative resolution that should havecriteria for defining the regulatory capital of health care plan operators. If approved in the terms proposed, the text will modify Normative Resolution 515/22 and revoke Normative Resolutions 526/22 and 514/22, as well as Ans Normative Instruction 22/22.
The public consultation will be open for contributions until October 29, 2022. The subsidies on the subject, specifically regarding the text proposed by the draft normative resolution, should be forwarded directly through the ANS website.
To propose the standard in question, the ANS claims to have considered international discussions that resulted in the progression and updating of prudential regulation models in Brazil, for the banking and insurance sectors, as well as internationally applied models for some regulated sectors.
The improvement of prudential regulation for the banking sector was due to the Basel agreements (Basel I, II and III – 1998, 2004 and 2010, respectively), whose main intention was to adapt the capital of financial institutions to the risks actually faced by them.
The regulators of the insurance market acted in the same direction. The International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), of which the ANS is a part, has promoted a very extensive review, proposing to the sector and its supervised entities to meet the relevant and material categories of risks to which they may be subject to the application of solvency rules.
Both sectors also migrated to the model now considered by the ANS, which takes into account qualitative criteria for the identification of the minimum regulatory capital required.
The current model of regulatory capital definition of health plan operators considers the solvency margin for its calculation. However, because it is a variable amount and defined according to the volume of indemnified payments and events measured by the regulated entities, this capital could sometimes not be congruent with the risks to be mitigated.
Thus, the main intention of the ANS with the proposed adjustments, in summary, is to replace the current model with a more modern one, which will effectively consider the risks to which the regulated entities are subject, according to the calculation carried out in the terms established by the regulator itself.
In addition to the migration of the regulatory capital definition model explained above, the draft new normative resolution also proposes to update the value of the reference capital, which will increase to R$ 10,883,087.01 (ten million, eight hundred and eighty-three thousand, eighty-seven reais and a penny).
If approved without reservation, the provisions will come into force on 1 January 2023.
