Caixa Geral de Depósitos Chief Paulo Macedo Pitches a National Catastrophe Fund in Coimbra — Mandatory Insurance to Widen, State to Subsidise the Uninsurable

Paulo Macedo, the long-running president of Caixa Geral de Depósitos, used a podium at the 'Entre a Ruína e a Reconstrução: Direito, Sociedade e Esperança após a Calamidade' conference in Coimbra on Tuesday 19 May 2026 to call for a fundo nacional de catástrofes backed by the state, the banks, and the insurance industry — and pegged to a wider mandatory-insurance perimeter with public subsidies for households and firms that cannot otherwise carry the premium. Jornal de Negócios first reported the contours of the proposal from inside the venue.

What Macedo Actually Proposed

The CGD president stopped short of putting a number on the fund's seed capital, but he framed the architecture across four lashings. First, the existing mandatory-insurance perimeter — today thin outside motor and certain professional liabilities — would widen to cover habitação and small-business assets exposed to flood, fire, and storm risk. Second, the state would shoulder premium subsidies for households and microenterprises priced out of the private market. Third, banks would provide complementary financing for viable rebuild plans where insurance payouts fall short. Fourth, a dedicated fund — funded jointly — would absorb the systemic tail risk the private sector cannot price.

Why Now

Macedo's pitch lands two weeks after the APS (Associação Portuguesa de Seguradoras) booked the Tempestade Kristin cluster at €1.3 billion in eventual claims, with €530 million still pending settlement at the fund-of-last-resort level. The Coimbra venue itself is a reference point: the conference was organised around the 'após a calamidade' framing that has dominated banking-sector commentary since the storm-Kristin payout window opened. Climate-adjusted loss frequency across the Portuguese mainland is, in the actuarial readings the conference circulated, no longer compatible with the current voluntary insurance penetration of below 35% for housing flood cover.

The Political and Sectoral Reaction

The proposal touches three live policy threads. The Ministério das Finanças has been canvassing a state-backstop architecture for catastrophe risk since the autumn 2025 storm season, but has not yet settled on a budgetary line. The APS has lobbied for compulsory cover on the housing side but resisted the public-subsidy element, fearing premium price competition. CGD itself sits inside the proposal as a financier of last resort — a positioning that could pull the bank into a development-finance role outside its standard commercial perimeter. Mário Centeno, the Banco de Portugal governor, has separately flagged climate-adjusted underwriting as an open file in the next macroprudential cycle.

What This Means for Expats

If you own a home in Portugal: the mandatory-insurance perimeter widening would, if legislated, oblige flood and storm cover on most housing stock rather than leaving it to the optional clauses now bundled into seguros multirriscos.
If you rent: renters' policies are not in the perimeter as currently sketched, but landlord-side mandatory cover would likely pass through into rents over a two-to-three-year settlement.
If you run a microenterprise: the subsidy element would in principle cap your premium contribution at a fixed percentage of turnover, with the state absorbing the rest — the percentage threshold is not yet defined.
What happens next: the Macedo proposal sits outside any current government bill; the route to legislation runs through the Ministério das Finanças or via a parliamentary initiative from the AD-CDS bench, with no formal tabling yet scheduled.