Overview
For more than 30 years, Tom Morante has counseled clients in U.S. and foreign insurance regulatory, compliance, and transactional matters. Tom’s clients rely on him to help them navigate an increasingly complex global regulatory and technology-driven environment. Tom advises insurance and reinsurance companies; captive insurers; insurance agents, brokers, and wholesalers; financial institutions; and investment funds and fund managers. His clients also include businesses operating in the United States and abroad with respect to mergers and acquisitions, joint venture transactions, capital formation, and licensing and distribution agreements.
Tom handles matters involving life and annuities, health, property and casualty and business interruption coverage, extended warranty, representations and warranties, commercial general liability, title, data privacy and cyber risk, directors and officers, surplus lines, parametric, crop, credit, and political risk insurance. In addition, companies in numerous industries have sought Tom’s counsel on complex U.S. and foreign regulatory and transactional matters.
Collaborating with foreign law firms around the world, Tom also handles regulatory compliance, transactional, and enforcement matters abroad. He is fluent in Spanish and completed undergraduate studies in Colombia and Spain, and legal studies in Mexico. Insurance clients regularly ask Tom to assist in the development of offshore life insurance, annuities, and investment products in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and other offshore jurisdictions. He provides counsel on the foreign laws implicated in the distribution and cross-border sale of insurance products, with an emphasis on Latin America and Asia, and also advises U.S. insurers with respect to establishing operations in various foreign countries.
Tom’s representative insurance matters include domestic and foreign insurance company formation and authorization, mergers and acquisitions and sale of policy portfolios, captive insurance company formation, and policy contract drafting and coverage analysis. In addition, he handles insurance agent, agency, managing general agent, and third-party administrator licensing under state insurance laws; advising on sales practices such as digital marketing and insurtech transactions, fronting and reinsurance transactions, structuring domestic and offshore private placement life insurance (PPLI) and private placement variable annuities (PPVA) as well as insurance dedicated funds; and cybersecurity and data privacy compliance.
Tom also advises insurance clients with respect to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) regulations, the USA Patriot Act and foreign country anti-money laundering laws, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), and foreign anti-corruption legislation. Further, Tom counsels clients on the financial services chapter of the USMCA, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Tom leads Carlton Fields’ International Insurance Regulatory team and co-chairs its Mexico Desk. He is the former chair of both the ABA Business Law Section’s International Coordinating Committee and International Business Law Committee, and currently co-chairs the ABA Business Law Section/International Law Section Working Group on international collaboration. He also serves as a member of the ABA UN Representatives Committee, which comprises a select few ABA members serving as representatives to the United Nations. Tom also serves on the board of advisors of Inter-American Dialogue’s Financial Services Advisor publication.