Portugal's Insurance and Pension Funds Supervisory Authority (ASF) published its Market Conduct Regulation and Supervision Report for 2024, setting out how it regulated, supervised and enforced market conduct requirements across insurers, pension fund managers and insurance intermediaries. The report highlights a 2024 supervisory focus on health insurance transparency and product comparability, value for money, claims handling, sustainability disclosures, digitalisation and potential discriminatory practices. ASF reports issuing 13 regulatory standards and running 12 public consultations in 2024, alongside a set of soft law measures. Key initiatives included work on “standard conditions” for health insurance, consulted on in 2024 and later issued as Circular No. 6/2025, which encourages insurers to offer a comparable option with standardised coverages and prescribed consumer-facing disclosures, and recommendations finalised in 2025 aimed at clarifying the distinction between health insurance and health “plans”. On supervision and enforcement, ASF conducted 2,860 supervisory actions and issued 61 recommendations and 250 specific determinations to insurers and pension fund managers, plus 332 recommendations and 246 specific determinations in insurance distribution, alongside 249 suspensions and 783 cancellations of intermediary registrations. Consumer engagement metrics included 1,937 complaints submitted to ASF and 2,068 concluded, with “claims” accounting for 62% of concluded cases, while insurers reported handling 28,942 complaints in the market. Advertising supervision covered 835 adverts, with 29 found non-compliant, and the report notes an increase in PRIIPs advertising submissions. Looking ahead, ASF sets out 2025 priorities including further work on value for money in credit protection insurance, monitoring implementation of the health insurance measures, developing additional disclosure rules for pension funds, expanding systematic supervision to digital advertising, and incorporating anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing risk into its market conduct risk assessment framework.

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