Canadian insurance regulators are teaming up to create a national, searchable database of disciplinary actions taken against licensed brokers across the country.
“It’s designed to be an information-sharing exercise,” said Ron Fullan, chairperson of the Canadian Insurance Services Regulatory Organizations (CISRO). “So you don’t have a situation where, for example, somebody had his or her license suspended or removed in one jurisdiction and simply goes and gets a license in another.”
The joint initiative is spearheaded by CISRO and the Canadian Council of Insurance Regulators (CCIR). The goal is to launch the national database by the end of 2013.
Once established, the national database will house in one place the disciplinary information that provincial and territorial insurance regulators now publish on their own websites or databases.
“Currently, each insurance regulator across Canada uses its own approach to communicate the results of disciplinary action,” said Robert Snow of the corporate policy and public affairs department at the Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FSCO).
“It is therefore time-consuming to conduct a search to determine disciplinary action against a licensed individual. Both the public and the industry can benefit from a more convenient system to conduct searches.”
Fullan said the national database has a number of advantages. (continued.)
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For example, insurance brokerage and company employers will have an easier time searching for any potential disciplinary history of an employment candidate. In addition, the initiative will allow for better communications between the country’s insurance regulators.
Also, internet access to the decisions will make it easier for consumers to trace breaches of the law by brokers and insurance agents, enhancing the public protection mandate of the regulators.
“Licensees need to realize that this isn’t 20 years ago, when something got published in a [paper] bulletin and it got filed in a file and nobody saw it again,” said Fullan. “With the advent of the internet, these are real and searchable decisions, and it’s much easier for people to find out about them. So you need to be mindful of that in terms of how you structure your business.”
A working group has determined the software package to be used. As the project nears completion, the working group will get appropriate contracts signed in the various jurisdictions, hammer out some form of cost-sharing agreement, and determine how to upload archived decisions over the past couple of years.
