Regulatory Sandbox in the Brazilian Financial System: Legal Foundations and Structural Dilemmas (Revista Direito Mackenzie)

Summary

• The article examines the legal aspects of the regulatory sandbox in Brazil, based on the Economic Freedom Law (Lei nº 13.874/2019) and the Startups Legal Framework (Lei Complementar nº 182/2021).p.2
• The UK Financial Conduct Authority formalised the first structured regulatory sandbox programme for the financial sector in 2015.p.6
• The Central Bank of Brazil was the first financial regulator to implement a sandbox, through Resolução BCB nº 29 of 26 October 2020.p.17
• After two years of operation, in November 2024, the BEE4 market had registered more than 6 thousand investors and run initial public offerings of four companies.p.18
• BEE4 developed a simplified regime for companies with revenue between R$ 10 million and R$ 30 million.p.18
• Susep launched the third edition of its sandbox in 2024, focused on sustainability and technological innovation.p.25

Key insights

1. The sandbox is a relevant instrument for innovation provided it is backed by supervision, transparency and structured regulatory transition.p.2
2. The sandbox responds to the need to produce regulatory knowledge before norms are generalised.p.6
3. A sandbox is not a space free of regulation and does not amount to automatic approval of a product for the market.p.14
4. The Vórtx QR Tokenizadora case shows incremental testing of innovations under supervision in the Brazilian capital market.p.10
5. The BCB, the CVM and Susep each run sandboxes for payments and the financial system, capital markets and insurance respectively.p.17
6. The BEE4 experience influenced CVM Public Consultation SDM nº 01/24, which created the FÁCIL regime.p.18
7. Brazil has no comparative metric between the performance of firms selected for the sandbox and those not selected.p.23
8. Dilemmas remain around large-scale effectiveness, transparency of selection criteria and regulatory arbitrage risks.p.26