OIC tightens noose on agent violators

OIC tightens noose on agent violators

The Office of the Insurance Commission (OIC) continues to tighten supervision on insurance intermediaries in a bid to protect consumers after it revoked the licences of 50 insurance agents and a broker during the first nine months of last year.

"The OIC has a policy to supervise the selling of insurance products and all intermediary channels by randomly inspecting representative and insurance broker offices nationwide," said Suthipol Taweechaikarn, the secretary-general.

The office revoked the licences of 50 insurance agents during the first nine months last year. The top five causes for such revocation were failure to remit premiums received from customers to insurance companies; failure to explain the terms and conditions to those who took out the insurance policies; allowing others who do not have licences to distribute the protection products; cheating on licence examinations; and counterfeiting the handwriting on insurance policy receipts.

The stringent supervision is meant to build public trust in the insurance distribution process and take notice when problems occur, he said.

For the agent companies, the office has both annual and specific examinations, said Mr Suthipol.

From the annual examination of 40 agent companies, the OIC found 29 had not complied with the rules and it revoked the operating licence of a broker unable to fix the problems within a specific period.

At the end of September 2017, the industry had a combined 532,699 agents and brokers, of which 271,483 are life insurance agents, 19,735 non-life insurance agents, 109,303 life insurance brokers and 132,176 non-life insurance brokers.

According to OIC data, agents remained the major distribution channel for life insurance for the nine months to September 2017, with direct premiums worth 239 billion baht or 48.2% of the total, followed by bancassurance generating 223 billion or 45.4%, and brokers contributed 14.2 billion baht or 2.89% of total direct premiums.

For non-life insurance, brokers generated the biggest direct premium, worth 105 billion baht or 58.2%, while agents contributed 26.3 billion or 14.6%, and bancassurance contributed 23.2 billion or 12.9%.

Brokers was the fastest-growing channel for both life and non-life insurance at 17.3% and 7.66%, respectively, while bancassurance rose 11.5% for life insurance and 3.21% for non-life insurance. Agents grew 5.43% for life insurance but fell 7.17% for non-life insurance.

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