The Risk of Bank Insurance in Brazil!
HAVANA TIMES – When I arrived in Curitiba, the first thing I was advised to do was open a bank account, so I could work officially and receive my payments. Another recently arrived Cuban recommended Santander, a financial institution with a fairly prestigious international reputation.
Back in Manaus, just weeks before leaving for Curitiba, we had already heard horror stories about some Brazilian banks, so I was quite apprehensive about the matter.
As to Banco Santander, I felt a bit more confident because I had seen their branches during my trips to Madrid—and the mind can be deceitful. The mind clings to any past detail to legitimize it when facing an unknown world.
In WhatsApp groups for immigrants, it had been mentioned that opening a bank account in Brazil wasn’t easy. For me, as a Cuban used to being worth nothing to the banks in my country and being newly arrived and unable to understand 80% of what they said in Portuguese, it would already be a major achievement just to open an account.
And I did it.
The downside was that I let myself be saddled with two insurance policies, which cost me 43 reais a month (about 7 USD). They sold me the idea that it was important, that here everyone has insurance.
They mentioned that my wife would receive 50,000 reais if I had an accident and died, and that sounded great to me because I felt grateful just to be able to open the account.
But the reality was that I was taking on a burden for my family’s finances, because I couldn’t afford those insurance payments, and I was doing it at an institution where it’s very difficult to cancel any insurance.
A few months later, I got hired by a company that required having an account at Itaú, another of Brazil’s major financial institutions, also with an international presence.
Itaú saddled me with two more insurance policies for a similar amount as Santander, because the staff member who helped me, taking advantage of the fact that I was a foreigner, told me they were mandatory.
Later, I learned about the usefulness of digital banks like NuBank and Mercado Pago, among others, which don’t charge fees, don’t force you to take out insurance, and even offer good returns on the money you save.
Between a lack of information and insecurity, I ended up paying insurance at Itaú for a year and a half, and for a little over two years at Santander.
At first, with that financial carelessness we Cubans sometimes have—acting as if money were abundant—I told myself that 86 reais wasn’t much, and that it was good for my family to have some security in case something happened to me.
So during that time, I paid nearly 800 reais at Itaú and about 1,200 at Santander. When I thought about what I could have done with those 2,000 reais (about 360 dollars), I held my head in my hands. That money could buy a Samsung A56 5G, for example, or a new washing machine, or a SMART TV.
Just to give you an idea: we bought our washing machine used for 600 reais, the combined value of my cellphone and my wife’s is 2,100 reais, and our donated TV isn’t smart, it’s actually quite dumb.
So I set out to cancel all those insurance policies. The ones from Itaú were relatively easy to terminate. It’s even possible to do it through the bank’s app.
However, canceling the ones from Santander took several months of being bounced around, misinformation, phone calls, failed attempts, branch visits, and finally—with the help of a well-meaning employee and a torturous phone call that lasted almost half an hour—I managed to get them canceled.
To Cubans arriving in Brazil, I warn you: ask for help when dealing with Brazilian banks, because you’ll lose out if you don’t.