21 March 2024
The Insurance Authority (IA) imposed a fifteen-month ban on a former insurance agent for her conduct of witnessing a client’s false signature and fabricating a change of beneficiary form.
This case arises from a life insurance policy which the agent arranged for a client. The client’s husband was to be named as the life insured. As part of the insurer’s application process, the husband (as the proposed life insured) was also required to sign the relevant application documents along with his wife. He was not, however, in Hong Kong at the time. To proceed with the application, the client (the wife) in addition to signing the application forms as the policy holder in her own name, also falsely signed her husband’s signature as the life insured. The agent gave credence to this duplicity by signing as the witness for this false signature. This was the agent’s first transgression.
The client also gave instructions that she wanted to be named as the beneficiary of the policy and asked the agent to help arrange this. Although the agent committed to doing this, she forgot. This was the agent’s second transgression.
Time passed by. The husband died. The client notified the agent to commence the claim process. The agent realised her omission with regards to arranging for the client to be the beneficiary. In an attempt to rectify this, the agent committed her third transgression by filling in the relevant beneficiary form, signing it as if she was the client and submitting it to the insurer.
In assessing the claim, the insurer discovered (from the husband’s passport) that he had not been in Hong Kong at the time the application documents for the policy were signed in Hong Kong and that the form to change the beneficiary had been signed three days after his death. The policy was rescinded, leaving the client with no coverage. In the ensuing investigation the agent admitted all three of her transgressions.
In assisting the client to cut corners in the application process by witnessing her false signature, the agent had effectively helped jeopardise the legal effectiveness of the insurance policy from the outset. In proceeding then to falsify the beneficiary form to cover up her failure to follow her client’s instructions, the agent displayed just how far her ethics had been eroded. Her escalating transgressions clearly impugned her fitness and properness as an insurance agent and she is deserving of the disciplinary action imposed.
The integrity of its practitioners underpins the insurance market with trust. The IA will not hesitate to use its disciplinary powers to reinforce that trust with the threat of proportionate disciplinary action.
The IA acknowledges the agent’s cooperation in accepting the disciplinary action. This has resulted in prompt resolution of the case. Her admissions, it is hoped, serve as a first step in rehabilitating her character.
In deciding the disciplinary sanction to be imposed under the Insurance Ordinance (Cap. 41), the IA has weighed all relevant circumstances in the balance, including that:
For further information on the IA’s enforcement work, please see the “Enforcement News” section of the IA’s website. Public disciplinary actions against licensed insurance intermediaries may also be searched on the “Register of Licensed Insurance Intermediaries” on the IA’s website.
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