Virgílio Lima promises Lisbon associates greater articulation between the companies of the Montepio group – O Jornal Económico
The candidate for List A for the presidency of Associação Mutualista Montepio Geral, Virgílio Lima, participated this Wednesday in a clarification session with the Associates of Lisbon, where he presented the team and the general lines of his program, in a full room at the Chamber of Commerce .
Maria de Belém, who is running for president of the General Assembly, was the first to take the stage, followed by Edmundo Martinho, president of Santa Casa da Misericórdia, and candidate for the Assembly of Representatives.
Only then did Virgílio Lima, leader of List A, take the stage, who recalled that “this Board of Directors tidied their house in an atypical year and in a context of such significant difficulties.”
The current chairman of the Board of Directors “who has been with the group for 44 years” understands that it is essential to continue the work of “stabilizing the Montepio Group, internally and externally”.
“In institutional terms, the chairman of the Board of Directors has the obligation to present a candidacy”, said Virgílio Lima, who admits to having questioned himself about whether he was advancing for a new term.
“The year 2020 was structuring from the outset because we were faced with the imposition of a new auditor that was crucial in terms of impairments in some assets of the group and in the results of the group itself”, began by explaining the president of Associação Mutualista, who recalled that that year was the year of the pandemic and telecommuting.
At a time when “our statutes were not yet registered, there was some tension with the General Directorate of Social Security regarding its registration. This forced a work of dialogue, but managed to definitively register the statutes”, said Virgílio Lima.
“We also had the Benefits Regulation that was out of adjustment, with the implicit rates of return that were not compatible with the applications we wanted to make” said Virgílio Lima who considered “something fundamental and urgent”, to review this regulation because the “actuarial modalities which are the most natural”.
“Following the publication of the Code of Mutual Associations, they were faced with the need to present a 10-year activity plan and a convergence plan for the insurance solvency level adequate to the specificity of our activity, also 10 years. However, the legislator did not need the necessary adaptations to the mutualist activity and there was an intense work to prepare this convergence plan”, reported Virgílio Lima.
“We know that we have to have the appropriate level of equity for this hybrid group” which “is an association of people, not capital. The parent company does not have capital, but later it has subsidiary companies that expand capital”, he said.
“This work was carried out in dialogue with the Supervisory Authority of Insurance and Pension Funds (ASF)”, said the current president of Mutualista. However, the ASF did not approve the Convergence Plan for the level of solvency appropriate to the nature of the Mutual Association, because, it explains, “the legal regime that frames the ASF is the regime of insurance activity, there is no legal regime for associations mutual funds, and to that extent there is a legislative gap here that needs to be filled”, he added.
Associação Mutualista “got results”, he said, adding that “in such a difficult year, the savings of members grew 70 million in net terms”.
In the last quarter of 2020 “we have already observed associative growth, which continued in 2021. At the moment we have 602 thousand members”, he revealed.
In October, Mutualista Montepio has an associative margin of 104 million euros (without accumulated in 10 months), 30% above the value registered a year earlier, explained the institution’s current president, who added “17 million surpluses, or that is, of positive results, at the end of September”.
The group “is also showing positive results, even the bank has already managed to present positive results in the last quarter, of 19 million euros, and we think that this is consistent. If we did the consolidated balance today, we would already have positive results”, he said.
The Montepio Residences had negative results in 2020, due to the increased costs resulting from the pandemic for the 1,000 users, he said.
“I decided to move forward, even after the great challenges that lie ahead”, said Virgílio Lima, who promises to “continue what is ok” and “renew and correct what is not well”. The candidate who heads the List A for a new term at the head of Mutualista promises “greater articulation with the entire activity of the group and with the management, which should have simpler corporate governance”.
For this, it created a Strategic Committee that brings together the CEOs of the various companies in the Group, explained. This committee is used to monitor the activity and business plans of the various companies, as explained later by the candidate for CFO (financial administrator), João Carvalho das Neves.
The president of Mutualista promises synergies in terms of functioning between the group’s companies. “We are creating ACE (complementary groupings of companies) to optimize the functioning of the set in specialized areas”.
In the Strategic Committee “are the strategic plans of each entity and the global strategic plan and their consistency and connection, in order to avoid overlaps and redundancies”.
The digitization of the group is in progress announced yet.
“In addition, we have a set of group assets that we must work on,” said Virgílio Lima Impulso, who “there is a lot of talk about unproductive assets, in fact, there is a potential for extraordinary capital gain, which we are going to try to use.”
“The social economy is the third largest employer in the country”, recalled the leader of List A.
List A is made up of an executive team that has Idália Serrão as head of the Residences and as areas of social responsibility; João Carvalho das Neves for the financial and real estate areas; Rui Heitor (non-executive director of Banco Montepio), who will be responsible for legal, internal control and compliance, and Fernando Centeno Amaro, who is currently responsible for Banco Montepio’s social economy network.
It was Fernando Amaro who announced that the List A program includes a housing with rents modality giving the member the possibility to keep the housing at the end. These are measures aimed at the acquisition / rental of housing at earned costs and “access to housing on a resolvable rent basis”, as the program reads.
Fernando Amaro also presented the digital transformation goal and the sustainability goals (ESG) that will be integrated into the management. Sustainability monitoring committees will be created.
List A also has in its program the reinforcement of protection against health risks, centered on the Montepio Saúde Card and on the Association’s partner network, on preventive medicine programs and support for the most vulnerable and on the expansion of responses and services provided by Residências Montepio – Health Services.
Virgílio Lima also presented Alípio Dias and Luís Patrão as non-executive directors in case the list is new on December 17th.