Lucas Vergílio*

This year, the School of Business and Insurance completed 50 years of operations, reinforcing its pioneering and innovative features without losing its roots. Since June 1971, ENS has sought to anticipate market trends, offering educational programs of excellence from technical instruction to higher education. This vision for the future – combined with the resilience of a dynamic market which continues to grow and change – largely explains the School’s longevity.
ENS goes beyond the conventional label of an educational institution. Over the last five decades, it has been one of the protagonists in the development of the insurance industry in Brazil, training and qualifying different generations of professionals. With a focus on continuing education, it helps to prepare a workforce with a high degree of specialization and qualification. About 580 thousand people have been impacted by undergraduate and postgraduate programs, MBAs, courses, exams, international training and events. Of this total, more than 100,000 were qualified as insurance brokers.
These 50 years have seen a great deal of transformations. As the insurance industry evolved and adapted to economic changes, ENS also understood the need to reposition itself within the market. In 2019, it underwent an extensive revamp, expanding the offer of educational programs to other business segments. Thus, it transcended the breadth it had already been offering to the insurance industry and attracted professionals from related areas. This repositioning included a name change and a new visual identity.
The new field of activity was expanded to include business, consumer relations, innovation and marketing, among other areas of knowledge. Students gained a wider spectrum of possibilities, and they can now specialize in topics such as digital transformation, sustainable leadership, management of healthcare systems and services, finance and strategic human resource management.
ENS offers a complete portfolio of educational programs, covering all career stages and meeting the demands of the most varied professional profiles: introductory courses, technical qualification (insurance brokers and claim consultants), undergraduate and postgraduate programs, MBAs, extension courses, executive training and advanced international training.
In recent years, ENS has been implementing a series of innovative actions. In São Paulo (SP), it has built the first Future Room in Latin America, an avant-garde environment with high-resolution audiovisual equipment that connects people from all over the world. Another innovative venture was Nuv.Ens, a collaborative space aimed at students interested in insurance networking, studies or business.
These milestones were achieved in often challenging situations. The Covid-19 pandemic, for example, required ENS to adapt quickly, uniting all work teams. The first step was to migrate face-to-face activities to an online environment. The institution has always invested heavily in technology to support its administrative and academic activities and thus managed to quickly adjust to the new landscape.
Currently, programs can be followed in the classroom and online, in open classes or in classes closed for companies. In the latter case, the School designs fully customized corporate solutions to meet each client’s specificities and particularities. The collective effort and ability to maintain excellence in teaching has received wide recognition from students and also from the Brazilian Ministry of Education. The School currently has several grades 5 and 4, on a scale of up to 5 in course authorization and accreditation assessments, in the Enade [Higher Education Assessment Exam] and in the IGC (General Index of Courses).
To expand the reach of its activities, ENS also sought to strengthen its commercial, academic and institutional partnerships. Today, nearly all of the country’s Insurance Brokers Unions (Sincors) promote the School’s educational programs. They act as a single business unit to expand teaching activities and attract new students.
For over 20 years, ENS has had agreements with institutions abroad to administer exams and carry out training programs. The pandemic, however, brought limitations on transport and transit to other countries. The School had to find new solutions to go beyond its borders, and started to offer international courses through the Future Room. An unprecedented agreement signed with the University of Tel-Aviv resulted in the training course ‘Innovation in Insurance of Start-up Nation, Israel’. Other programs are already scheduled for 2022, in partnership with Universidade Nova, in Lisbon, and the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII), in England.
Recently, the School has established academic partnerships with other leading institutions and companies, such as IBM, to offer educational programs in the areas of technology and data security, and PUC-Rio, to develop research and carry out educational activities within the field of insurance.
A substantial partnership deal was signed in 2020 with Clube de Regatas do Flamengo, with a focus on sustainability and social responsibility. ENS acquired the naming rights of Flamengo’s swimming team, which was renamed Flamengo/ENS, with the aim of promoting the development of new talents and assisting the club’s Olympic athletes. Under this agreement, Flamengo can allocate 110 full scholarships for ENS undergraduate programs and MBA courses to Olympic athletes and club employees in situations of social vulnerability.
The strength of the insurance market can be seen in numbers: it accounts for 6.5% of GDP and has R$ 1.2 trillion in reserves. Revenues from the segments supervised by SUSEP totaled R$ 249.64 billion in the first 10 months of 2021, an 13.3% increase when compared to the same period in 2020, when revenues totaled R$ 198.07 billion. In October 2021 alone, the sector amassed R$ 25.35 billion, which corresponds to a 13.8% growth when compared to October 2020.
In a segment that is as competitive and increasingly fierce as this one, the best opportunities will be used by those who are best prepared. The importance of being up to date is permanent, whether in technical instruction or higher education programs, including postgraduate courses and MBAs. Acknowledging the ever-growing need for professional training in the sector, the School maintains its leading role in this industry, which is the foundation for the country’s economic and social development. And it will remain so, helping to train new generations of professionals with the same objectives that guided its foundation 50 years ago.

*Lucas Vergílio is president of the School of Business and Insurance (ENS)