The Life Insurance Council of the Alberta Insurance Council has issued a decision and assessed a $750 civil penalty against a former agent who’d left licensed employment and who had decided not to renew his certificates of authority.
Chase Boswell was a randomly selected auditee, asked as part of the insurance council’s annual audit to provide proof of his continuing education (CE) credits for the 2020-2021 certificate term. The March 2022 audit sought to verify that the CE credits claimed on licensing applications for the term were correct.
Licensed since February 2019, Boswell was sent various correspondences over the course of a month in early 2022 and given a deadline of May 19 to respond. The agent responded the day after the deadline saying he hadn’t used his license at all in the past 12 months and had decided that he would not be renewing his license in the future.
In response, the insurance council emailed to remind the agent that, as a current certificate holder, he must satisfy the audit. By the date the council had issued its report on the matter, it still had not received a full response to the demand for information.
“In terms of the applicable sanction, the Insurance Act requires that all holders, and former holders of certificates of authority product information when called upon,” the council states in its decision. “The council is of the view that the public is not well-served when agents fail to comply with demands like the demand made in this case.”