It’s a known fact that publicizing someone’s errors is as or more effective than the applicable financial penalty. For this reason, one year ago, the Anbima – the association that resulted from the Andima/Anbid merger – began to disclose not only the statistics with the number and value of applied fines, but also the names of the fined institutions and their violations of the self-regulation code. Also revealed are the results of administrative proceedings, with data on settlement agreements approved by the Council for Investment Fund Regulation and Better Practices.

According to the Anbima’s market supervision superintendent, José Carlos Doherty, the number of fines has been declining since then. “It’s always good to have more people acting as watchdogs. Institutions compete, and no one wants to be leader when it comes to fines”, he affirms. Given the measure’s success, the association is planning to start disclosing the information monthly starting in the first quarter of this year – currently, the data is published on a quarterly basis.

The Anbima is hoping that the initiative will also bring more transparency to the self-regulation process. “I believe that today the financial market is already mature enough to understand the importance of increasing the level of transparency on penalties applied to investors.”