A broker has been fined $1,000 and put under mandatory supervision for a year after he signed insurance documents on behalf of his clients without their authorization.
B.C. broker Shea Kardi Cecil Kearns argued that in two separate instances, he signed documents for his clients so that they wouldn’t be inconvenienced while he worked out problems with their insurance.
“There is no dispute that the licensee forged the signature of two clients when executing insurance transactions for them,” the Insurance Council of B.C. wrote in its decision. “Based on the evidence, council concluded the forgeries were done for convenience without any material gain for the licensee…
“While the licensee believed he was acting in the clients' best interests, what concerned council is that, given his lengthy experience as an insurance licensee, he ought to have known that no circumstances exist where it is acceptable to forge another person's signature in an insurance transaction.”
The two incidents occurred within about a month of each other.
The Forgeries
Forgery 1: Driving to and from work
In the first example, Kearns met with a client in Richmond, B.C. to go over the transfer of a vehicle to her name. The client purchased insurance under a rate class that had her driving to and from work. After a month, the broker reviewed the insurance documents and realized that the client had intended the vehicle was for pleasure use only.
The broker called the client and informed her about the mistake. She said she couldn’t make it to the broker’s office to have the broker make the change. Sionce the broker did not have enough time to get to the client’s home to process the rate change, she gave him permission to sign her name on any insurance documents required.
He signed and initialled her name on the transactional documents that went back to the brokerage for batching – including the payment plan agreement. The mid-term policy change resulted in a premium reduction.
Forgery 2: Replacing a truck license plate
In a separate incident, Kearns processed an Insurance Corporation of B.C. transaction for a motor vehicle dealership in Squamish, B.C. The internet at the dealership was not working, so Kearns manually completed an interim certificate of vehicle insurance for the client’s newly-purchased truck.
About a year later, the client attended an insurance agency in Pemberton to replace the truck's licence plate, which had gone missing. The Pemberton agency told the client that a new plate could not be issued with only a manual registration and insurance document on hand.
The client called the dealership in Squamish to register his displeasure. The dealership then called the broker and asked him to reprint the transactional documents, since the broker did the initial manual registration. The broker brought the reprinted documents to the Squamish dealership, and signed the transactional documents on behalf of his client without the client’s knowledge or permission.
