Brazil’s transport concessions have priced insurance coverage on a contract-by-contract basis for years, with no shared benchmark for what a port, waterway or airport operator should actually carry. On Wednesday, August 5, 2026, in Brasília, Minister of Ports and Airports Tomé Franca signed an ordinance at the Seguros Day event creating the Working Group on Insurance, Guarantees and Risks in Transport Infrastructure (GT-SegInfra). The group has 100 days to deliver a report with recommendations for regulatory improvement, putting a firm expiration date on the current patchwork of requirements. For carriers, brokers and reinsurers already exposed to Brazilian port, waterway and airport concessions, the working group’s report will be the first concrete signal of how far the government wants to go in rewriting the terms of that exposure.
A 100-day clock on concession insurance requirements
GT-SegInfra’s stated goal is to build solutions that increase legal security for infrastructure projects, align insurance requirements with the market’s actual capacity, and reduce costs for new transport infrastructure ventures. That framing matters for underwriters: a working group instructed to match required coverage to what the market can absorb is effectively promising to stop demanding terms insurers cannot supply. The ordinance was signed in front of an audience of insurers and infrastructure operators rather than issued as a routine circular, and it lands inside a broader rewrite of Brazil’s insurance rulebook, from a new insurance law forcing carriers and brokers to overhaul how they operate to updated licensing requirements for the brokers who sell concession-related cover. Until now, each concession contract has set its own insurance and guarantee requirements individually, leaving carriers to underwrite one-off terms rather than a consistent product line — the inefficiency GT-SegInfra was built to address.
Who sits at the table — and who watched from outside
GT-SegInfra brings together representatives of the national secretariats for Ports, Civil Aviation and Waterways, the National Civil Aviation Agency (Anac), the National Waterway Transport Agency (Antaq), and representative bodies of industry and the insurance market, forming a permanent technical and institutional dialogue forum. Notably absent from that formal roster is Brazil’s insurance regulator. Susep, Brazil’s insurance regulator, took part in the August 5, 2026 Seguros Day event in Brasília, which brought together government, the insurance market and the infrastructure sector to discuss the role of insurance and guarantees in structuring transport infrastructure projects, and Susep’s superintendent, Alessandro Octaviani, personally attended the event, which also covered case experiences in port infrastructure risk management, as the regulator’s own recap of the event makes clear. Susep’s account confirms that the Ministry of Ports and Airports instituted GT-SegInfra at the event with the objective of discussing risk management and insurance requirements in sector projects — participation in the surrounding dialogue, not a seat on the working group itself. Susep has been active on other fronts too, from a cybersecurity manual issued for insurers to folding more than a dozen broker rules into a single resolution earlier this year.
What Santos and Paranaguá put at risk
The numbers behind two active concessions show why standardized requirements matter to underwriters. The Port of Santos — the largest in Latin America — is undergoing an access-channel concession process involving R$688 million in investment, and the Santos modernization is expected to increase navigation safety, reduce operational risks, and offer greater predictability to both port operations and the insurance market. Further south, the Paranaguá access-channel concession, the first of its kind in Brazil, is a landmark project envisaging R$1.23 billion in investment over 25 years. The Paranaguá contract with Consórcio Canal Galheta Dragagem covers gradually deepening the draft from 13.3 to 15.5 meters, plus permanent dredging, nautical signaling, vessel-traffic monitoring via the VTMIS system, and continuous hydrographic surveys, according to the ministry’s description of the concession contract — the kind of long-duration technical exposure any standardized insurance regime will need to price accurately. The ministry presents the Paranaguá model as strengthening navigation safety and creating a more predictable environment for operators, investors and the insurance market, serving as a reference for upcoming projects still being structured.
Aligning coverage requirements with a privatized concession model
Under the new port management model, operational execution is transferred to private partners while the government concentrates on planning and guaranteeing legal security — the framework GT-SegInfra is meant to standardize on the insurance side. The Ministry of Ports and Airports holds that better-structured contracts and a more balanced risk matrix increase project predictability and strengthen investor confidence. For Susep, the working group’s agenda overlaps with conversations already underway: the GT-SegInfra agenda also connects to separate discussions Susep has held with the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Ports and Airports on insurance applicable to construction works, concessions and leases, and the regulator frames its continuing dialogue with public bodies and strategic-sector representatives on using insurance as a tool for risk management and risk transfer in infrastructure projects. Susep says the public-private dialogue enables discussion of regulatory and market issues tied to proper risk allocation, insurance coverage design, and the conditions needed to develop insurance solutions compatible with infrastructure projects — precisely the standardization insurers and brokers active in Brazilian concessions will be watching over the next 100 days. The country’s risk-transfer market has been building capacity on other fronts too, including consolidation among carriers competing for market share, a trend that bears on how much underwriting capacity is available to absorb standardized infrastructure risk. With the clock already running on GT-SegInfra’s report, insurers and brokers underwriting Brazilian concessions have a defined window to shape what a standardized requirement actually looks like, rather than react to it once published.
