The Alberta Insurance Council (AIC) says two former insurance agents registered with World Financial Group Insurance Agency of Canada (WFG), Gurjeet Singh Kang and Jaspreet Singh Gill “demonstrated dishonesty or untrustworthiness” contrary to sections of the Insurance Act when they helped a colleague successfully complete his Harmonized Life License Program certification examination.

Both agents and the unnamed examinee were dismissed by WFG in October 2017 following an investigation into acts of collusion, when the course provider, Oliver Publishing, by webcam observed the two licensed associates assisting the candidate during the examination.

Kang and Gill both claim they were simply sharing the office, working on unrelated client files when the incident took place. In an email to the AIC, Gill, the senior agent, told investigators that the examinee would regularly use his office to practice mock exams. During the process he says the examinee could not always understand the English questions and would sometimes read the questions back to the agents to get a better understanding. “Sometimes I (would) read the questions on the computer screen and translate back to him in Punjabi language. I never had any intention to help him pass any of the exams,” Gill writes. It was, he says, an unconscious mistake to believe the exam was “just like the mock exam. We did not realize the person taking the exam has to be left alone. We thought the LLQP exam is an open book exam…and did not realize that being with a person would be considered cheating.”

After considering the images captured by the course provider where the agents are pictured sitting next to the examinee, despite claims that that they were present only to attend an unrelated meeting, the council concluded that the agent has “demonstrated dishonesty or untrustworthiness as described by section 480(1)(a) of the (Insurance) Act.” The AIC ordered a civil penalty of $5,000 be levied against each former agent.