Two former insurance agents banned from working in financial services after giving false information to customers and firms

SINGAPORE — The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has issued prohibition orders against two former insurance agents for their dishonest conduct in the sale of Integrated Shield Plans, which are insurance policies linked to the Central Provident Fund (CPF) Board.

Mr Chong Yoon Loi, a former agent at Aviva Financial Advisers (AFA), a financial advisory firm that is a subsidiary of Aviva insurance firm, and Mr Suresh Kannan, who was from The Great Eastern Life Assurance Company, have been barred from providing any financial advisory service.

MAS said in a news release on Wednesday (Dec 2) that Mr Chong is also forbidden from taking part in the management, acting as a director or becoming a substantial shareholder of any financial advisory firm for four years, and Mr Suresh similarly cannot do so for two years.

They are prohibited from carrying on business as well as taking part in the management of any insurance intermediary.

The prohibition orders against the two begin with immediate effect.

The Integrated Shield Plan is a medical insurance plan that offers extra benefits on top of those provided by the MediShield Life policy under the CPF Board, which covers payments for large hospital bills and selected outpatient treatments.

Integrated Shield Plans are jointly insured by a private insurer and the CPF Board, and policyholders need to approach only the private insurer, which will take care of matters relating to the policies and claims.

THE CASE AGAINST CHONG YOON LOI

Between May and August 2017, Mr Chong sold an Integrated Shield Plan from Aviva to three people who had already bought such policies from another insurer when they were in good health.

Mr Chong had wilfully misled two of those people into believing that they could hold more than one of this insurance plan.

This is even though their applications for a new Integrated Shield Plan would result in the termination of their earlier plan with another insurance firm.

MAS said: “This could have resulted in serious consequences for the policyholders, as new insurance policies do not cover medical conditions that policyholders already suffer from at the time of entry into force of the policies.

“Hence, the policyholders could have lost insurance cover for medical conditions that they had developed since the purchase of their original policies.”

MAS added that Mr Chong had also intentionally given various false information in the applications of the three policyholders to Aviva and AFA. 

“He did this mainly to prevent the policyholders from being identified as vulnerable clients, which might have led to AFA contacting them to ensure that they had understood the policies that they were purchasing,” it said.

THE CASE AGAINST SURESH KANNAN

Mr Suresh forged the signature of one policyholder when applying to buy an Integrated Shield Plan in March 2018.

He declared in the application form that the policyholder did not have any pre-existing medical conditions, without first checking with the policyholder if this was true.

“This conduct could have resulted in the policy being rendered invalid, and the policyholder denied insurance cover due to the non-disclosure of material information to the insurer,” MAS said.