Episode 33: Tackling the Chaos Cycle of Insurances by Design with Anthony Novaes

Many people feel that terms and conditions of insurance contracts aren’t meant to be understood. It’s small print and full of industry specialized jargon, aiming at preventing legal risks, but, on the contrary, actually provoking them. People purchasing insurances that they don’t understand, causes problems on the next phases of the supply chain. All this makes the insurance industry the perfect candidate for legal design. This week we meet with Anthony Novaes, a Brazilian insurance lawyer and a legal designer who has conducted ground-breaking research on how legal design can improve insurance practices. Insurance law is a one of the heavily regulated areas of law, which implies that there are many interests involved which need balancing, and particular groups that need governmental protection (or governmental control). The problem of heavy regulation is that it makes the market complex and unpredictable to navigate, especially for anyone who doesn’t have the training for that. Legal design can be of great help to make insurances more functional, and also prevent disputes related to them. Legal design can also offer alternatives to traditional legal regulation, as it can help create policy measures that satisfy the needs of the stakeholders better. Anthony tells us what are the typical pain points in insurances and how to address them with the help of legal design. Anthony Novaes is a Brazilian Insurance, Reinsurance and Private Pensions Attorney. He is author of the first academic investigation on legal design applied to insurance and of articles focused on legal innovation, civil law, civil procedural law, legal design, and insurance. He was certified as a Legal Design Expert Practitioner by Legal Creatives. He is a teacher and coordinator of the course “Seguros 4.0” at Future Law, which offers the first discipline on legal design and insurance in the world.