The current legal framework for insurance contracts in Portugal has been in force for nearly twenty years, a period during which the real estate market has changed in scale, construction costs have increased significantly, and technology has transformed risk assessment. Despite these advances, a fundamental weakness remains: the idea that someone is monitoring the adequacy of the protection purchased, when in reality there is no clear moment of validation.
This phenomenon is particularly visible in home insurance. Property owners track the market value of their properties, but insurance protects reconstruction capacity, not market value. This seemingly simple distinction produces relevant consequences when a claim occurs. Many policyholders discover coverage shortfalls only at that moment, not due to lack of a policy or premium paid, but because all parties assumed that someone was validating the protection.
In recent years, real estate appreciation has been widely debated, but the evolution of construction costs has received less attention. More expensive materials, scarcer specialized labor, more demanding technical requirements, and new energy efficiency standards have substantially altered the reality of construction. The assets have changed, the risk has changed, and the central question has become whether protection has kept pace with this movement.
The current challenge is no longer the existence of insurance, but its adequacy over time. The legal framework assigns the policyholder a central role in defining the value to be protected, but this model may not be suited to a context of greater technical complexity and rapid cost evolution. The real problem lies in the gray areas of practical responsibility: in the tendency to assume monitoring because several parties are involved in the process and in the conviction that someone confirmed what, in the end, no one validated.
