The Financial Services Commission of Ontario received 37 complaints about the conduct of insurance agents during the fourth quarter of 2002, including instances of fraud, forgeries, misrepresentation and agent misconduct.

Twenty-three cases were forwarded for potential enforcement action, six were resolved, and eight cases were closed.

The complaints are listed in FSCO’s report on Q4 compliance activities.

During the quarter FSCO initiated 118 audits of life agents to ensure they met their CE requirements, and 346 audits to ensure life agents met their errors and omissions insurance requirements. There were two cases requiring enforcement action to be initiated as a result of the audits.

A total of 29 cases were forwarded to investigations. Of that total, 24 cases related to agents and adjusters, two related to insurance companies and three related to loan and trust companies. Of these, seven resulted in charges laid in Provincial Offences court, six Superintendent’s Orders were issued, six Letters of Censure were issued, and 10 files were closed with no enforcement action.

During the fourth quarter, 63 Letters of Warning were issued to life agents, all of whom were late in applying for licence renewal. Fourteen Letters of Censure were issued to life agents who did not provide full disclosure of information on their licence applications.