Two former insurance agents have been issued prohibition orders (POs) by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) as they engaged in dishonest conduct involving the sale of integrated shield plans.
The POs were issued following investigations conducted by MAS, and will take effect from Dec. 2, 2020.
The first agent misled clients into holding more than one integrated shield policy
The first man, Chong Yoon Loi, was a former agent for Aviva Financial Advisers Pte Ltd (AFA).
Between May and August 2017, Chong sold integrated shield policies to three policyholders, who had already purchased such policies from another insurer when they were in good health.
Chong misled two of the policyholders into believing they could hold more than one integrated shield policy, when their applications for the new policies would result in the termination of their previous policies.
According to MAS, this could have resulted in serious consequences for the policyholders, as new insurance policies do not cover medical conditions that policyholders already suffer from.
Hence, Chong's actions could have caused these policyholders to lose insurance cover for medical conditions that they had developed since the purchase of their original policies.
In addition, Chong also intentionally provided false information of the three policyholders to Aviva Ltd and AFA, in order to prevent them from being identified as vulnerable clients.
He did so in order to prevent AFA from contacting the policyholders to ensure that they had understood the policies that they were purchasing.
Chong was given a four-year PO, which prohibits him from providing any financial advisory service for the duration.
The second agent forged a policyholder's signature
In March 2018, the second man, Suresh Kannan, forged the signature of a policyholder in an application for the purchase of an integrated shield plan.
He was a former agent for The Great Eastern Life Assurance Company Limited (GEL).
In addition, Kannan also declared in the application form that the policyholder did not have any pre-existing medical conditions, without checking with the policyholder whether this was true.
According to MAS, this could have resulted in the policy being rendered invalid, due to the non-disclosure of material information to the insurer.
The policyholder could then be denied insurance cover as a result.
Kannan was given a two-year PO, which prohibits from providing any financial advisory service for the duration.
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