August 2024
A secretary is an individual employed in an office to assist with correspondence, make appointments and carry out administrative tasks. Secretaries often become the most reliable people to work with, the go-to person when anyone wants to know how to claim expenses, organize business trips, how to use the photocopier, find out who can fix the air-conditioning and help you share (or unfreeze) your screen on a Zoom call.
It is not uncommon for insurance agents to employ secretaries. As the insurance regulator we know this, because we have seen incidents where certain insurance agents seek to rely on secretaries, not only for the vital administrative tasks mentioned, but also for another function that a secretary should never be asked to perform. That of, scapegoat.
A scapegoat is someone who is blamed for something that someone else has done. Some insurance agents, when accused of misconduct, completing an application for a licence incorrectly, or similar act that may adversely impact their fitness and properness in the eyes of the regulator, think they can simply blame their secretary for the culpable act to avoid any disciplinary consequences (even when the evidence obviously points to the agent).
This thinking is as disreputable as it is misguided, for several reasons.
Firstly, Standard and Practice 3.1(b) of the Code of Conduct for Licensed Insurance Agents states as follows:
“Where a licensed insurance agent employs or engages another person to provide support to the agent in its carrying on of regulated activities, the agent should ensure the person has the integrity and competence to discharge the duties for which the person is employed or engaged and supervise that person diligently in performing such duties. In so far as the person’s work impacts the regulated activities carried on by the agent, the agent is and remains responsible for such activities.
As such, in blaming a secretary, the insurance agent (in being responsible for the secretary’s actions) is merely inviting the IA to consider whether the agent (in addition to the misconduct or other act of which he stands accused) is additionally culpable for breaching the above-quoted provision in the Code of Conduct (which may serve to increase the level of disciplinary penalty).
Secondly, if the insurance agent is seeking to suggest that the secretary had filled in the licence application for him and had omitted to include certain information the agent had given the secretary, then the agent is merely displaying a lack of fitness and properness to be able to complete an application form himself (which he himself is supposed to complete and confirm the truth of all information stated therein). If he cannot be trusted to complete a licence application being submitted to a regulator (the IA would obviously ask itself) can he really be trusted to assist potential policy holders complete applications for insurance?
Thirdly, a propensity to seek to shift blame onto someone who is there to assist, reflects negatively on a person’s sense of fairness, character and integrity, being traits which a regulator must take into account in considering the fitness and properness of the agent. A secretary, after all, is a person and it begs the question of whether someone who is capable of treating people like this, has what it takes for a career in insurance which is, at its core, a people-business.
Sometimes secretaries are not used as scapegoats, but to perform tasks that insurance agents themselves should be performing. It is still not unknown for an insurance agent occasionally to ask his secretary to do his CPD courses for him. This, of course, results in the secretary acquiring more up to date knowledge about insurance than the boss! Further, as a consequence, the insurance agent himself is not only in breach of the CPD requirements, but of misleading acts that would likely result in even more adverse consequences for his licensing position. So don’t do this!
All in all, then, if you are the type of person that thinks it is acceptable to blame a secretary, for your own shortcomings (or getting a secretary to do regulatory tasks which you yourself should be doing) we wish you the best of luck………in another industry, because the insurance industry is not for you!
This article is dedicated to all the hard-working secretaries in the Hong Kong insurance industry who play a vital role in maintaining its position as an international finance centre.