Following the current foreign regulatory trend (England, Singapore and more recently in Latam, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia) favourable to regulatory sandboxes, the SBS has issued, on August 19, 2021, Resolution S.B.S. No. 2429-2021, Regulation for the temporary realization of activities in innovative models[1].
The Peruvian sandbox establishes two systems subject to the issuance of an authorization from the SBS: i) Flexibility; and, ii) Extraordinary. The first deals with regulated activities in which, for the success of the new business model, some exception or reduction of regulatory requirements is required; on the contrary, the second system deals with business models on activities that do not have a legislative framework of reference.
Although the rule implies an advance, the SBS has been cautious and only allows the acceptance of this regime by authorized companies, which closes the door to new Insurtech companies. The immediate future would be the creation of spaces to capture ideas of new business models by innovators, so insurers, acting first as accelerators or incubators, will proceed to acquire ownership of these ideas or more feasible prototypes to become a minimum viable product (obviously at a lower value than a startup that has a product in the Growth Stage or Expansion Stage phase, to the detriment of innovators) or by incorporating the teams of these innovative companies as part of their own staff, to later present to the SBS the pilot of the business model as their own.
Only time will tell if the limitation of access substantially affects the success of the standard, which is effective from February 1, 2022, or whether it will be necessary to migrate to a more open sandbox system.
[1] See: https://intranet2.sbs.gob.pe/dv_int_cn/2112/v1.0/Adjuntos/2429-2021.doc.pdf
