Hong Kong’s Insurance Authority (IA) has banned four individuals from registering as insurance agents due to the falsification of academic certificates. The move is part of the intensification of IA’s campaigns against unscrupulous insurance agents who use fake academic certificates to apply for licenses and work as insurance agents in the region.
The IA said that the three of the banned individuals applied for their licenses between 2014 and 2019, using academic certificates from a university in Mainland China. However, upon further investigation, the authorities found out that the certificates submitted as part of the requirements for acquiring a license to work as insurance agents were “not in existence at the material time.”
“For the fourth case, the relevant educational institute confirmed that it has neither issued an academic certificate nor any records to support that the individual did graduate from the institute. One individual who admitted to the allegation is banned from applying for registration as a licensed insurance agent for 23 months, while the other three received a ban of 35 months,” the IA said in a statement.
The IA warned that those trying to use forged or fake certificates to obtain a license for insurance agents will be heavily sanctioned, based on the existing laws.
“The IA wishes to cite these disciplinary actions to stress again that the use of false or forged documents is a serious act of deceit that undermines the probity and integrity of industry practitioners. Such transgressions, if allowed to perpetuate, will erode public trust in the insurance industry and do injustice to other insurance intermediaries who strive in good faith to meet the licensing criteria,” the IA stated.
With the current regulations, anyone who is caught using fake academic certificates or any other requirements for applying for a license will be penalized with HK$50,000 and jail time of six months.
Regarding the four individuals, the IA said that they would be banned from practicing as insurance agents until they “can establish to our satisfaction that they have undergone a complete reformation of character and obtained the requisite academic qualification.”
The IA saidthat since the felony was committed before the IA took over from the three self-regulatory bodies on Sept. 23, 2019, the cases will be processed following the requirements prevailing at the time, and the disciplinary approaches which will be used are the ones adopted by the former Insurance Agency Registration Board.
