Complainant fined after reporting her supervisor to insurance council

The Insurance Council of British Columbia (ICoBC) has fined Lisa Marie Berry, assessed investigation costs and ordered Berry to complete remedial coursework after she self-reported and also reported her supervisor to the regulator for copying and pasting client signatures to new insurance forms.

First licensed as a level 1 general insurance salesperson in May 2021, Berry was previously employed at an agency where her supervisor, identified only as AB, employed her own staff under her agreement with the agency where both worked.

In March 2024, Berry submitted a complaint against AB to council stating that the agent instructed her to copy signatures from existing client files, affix them to application forms and use them without clients’ consent. “The licensee referred to this practice as ‘Frankensigning,’” the intended decision in the case states. The council’s investigator was unable to find any documentation, beyond Berry’s allegations, indicating that AB had instructed her to copy and paste client signatures.

In one case, multiple clients who owned different sides of a duplex together (the duplex did not have a strata bank account), needed to sign an acknowledgement that the clients were aware any refund check would be payable in the name of the owners of the strata plan. “As the strata did not have its own bank account, this would pose an issue,” the intended decision in the case states.

Berry alleges that AB instructed her to create a form stating that the clients were aware of this detail by copying and pasting existing signatures in the clients’ files. She also says AB would leave pre-signed application forms for licensees within the agency to use when AB was on vacation. At the committee meeting in the case, Berry described her experience under AB as a hostile working environment.

For her role in submitting the “frankensigned” documents and for her admission that she’d copy and pasted signatures 10 or 11 times for different clients, the council fined Berry $1,500, assessed costs totalling $1,620 and ordered Berry to complete one course on ethics and another on confidentiality.

“The licensee knew that submitting pre-signed forms for new insurance policies was wrong, but disregarded her duties for the sake of convenience,” the intended decision states. “One aggravating factor was that although the licensee was aware her conduct was wrong, she engaged in it anyway.”