After the Life Insurance Council of Manitoba (ICM) was unable to substantiate a former client’s complaint, its decision in the case states that Cindy Tina-Marie Howell-Huckerby caused the province to incur higher investigation costs by delaying the investigative process.
Although the council’s decision contemplates other offences, ultimately it fined Howell-Huckerby, who is no longer a licensed life and accident & sickness agent, just $500 for failing to respond to council’s investigators by the required deadlines and for failing to provide full and complete responses to their inquiries.
“By failing to respond within the deadlines and providing incomplete responses, the former licensee delayed the investigative process, which resulted in higher investigation costs,” they write. In addition to the $500 fine, the agent was also assessed investigation costs of $2,500.
First licensed in Manitoba in July 2007, Howell-Huckerby’s license expired in May 2000. Among her responses to the council during the course of its investigation, the former agent pointed out that she’d left her previous agency in December 2016 and did not have copies of her notes or files from that time.
“As a non-licensee since 2020, without access to the original files, I do not feel that I have anything further to add to your inquiry,” she wrote to investigators in November 2023 in response to allegations that she’d informed her client that the product she sold was guaranteed when it was not.
“In this case, council was unable to substantiate the complaint submitted,” the decision states.
