After falsely declaring on eight different applications – licensing applications and licensing renewal applications – that she’d not been subject to bankruptcy proceedings, and after admitting that she doesn’t read license renewal application questions, the General Insurance Council of Manitoba has concluded that Cynthia Patricia Duke has violated sections of the Insurance Act and Code of Conduct. For making false declarations on her licensing applications in violation of the Act, the council fined Duke $250.
After declaring on her most recent licensing renewal application that she’d filed for bankruptcy in March 2018, an investigation revealed that she’d declared bankruptcy four times in four different provinces.
By email, dated December 1 and December 4, 2019, Duke wrote to council investigators, saying “I will admit to my negligence in not reading the application renewal. As I have done the application numerous times since 1993, I will own the fact that I no longer read the questions,” she writes. “As for my applications, all I can say is I did not read it. It was just automatic to skip through it and answer no to all, as I have always done from the beginning of my insurance career, starting in 1992.”
The sentiment is echoed in a later email, dated February 6, 2020. “I have been in the industry since 1992 and have only actually read the renewal application once or twice over the years.”
