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A B.C. insurance broker has lost his appeal of the four-year suspension of his licence, after he accessed his ex-girlfriend’s private information through the database of the province’s public auto insurer.
The Insurance Council of B.C. ordered the four-year ‘cancellation’ of Mohamed Alie Jalloh’s license for accessing the personal information of a woman identified only as ‘YB.’
Council found that the broker had “inappropriately” accessed the Insurance Corporation of B.C.’s database system three times in 2010 – on June 28, August 4 and September 21 – to view YB’s personal information.
At the time, Jalloh “was facing criminal proceedings relating to an alleged assault upon YB, who was his former girlfriend,” B.C. Financial Services Tribunal panel chair Patrick F. Lewis wrote in his appeal decision. “Within those proceedings he had given an undertaking not to communicate directly or indirectly with YB. That undertaking was in place during the alleged wrongful access of the ICBC database.”
Jalloh said he had accessed YB’s information on June 28 to learn her address so that he could return her apartment keys. He said he accessed her information on August 4 and September 21 at her request relating to insurance coverage.
Council didn’t accept Jalloh’s version of events and “cancelled” his licence for four years. Jalloh appealed the council’s decision to the B.C. Financial Services Tribunal.
Jalloh made a number of arguments at his appeal hearing. Among them, he contended that council “erred and was punitive in taking into account the undertaking given by [Jalloh] to a peace officer, which he did not breach,” Lewis wrote.
Lewis agreed no finding had been made as to whether or not Jalloh had breached – or intended to breach – the undertaking by accessing YB’s personal information. But council had been correct in considering the undertaking to be an aggravating factor, Lewis found.
“Counsel for the [Insurance Council of B.C.] rightly points out that the requirement of trustworthiness in a licensee extends beyond insurance business activities, as set out in Section 3 of Council's Code of Conduct,” Lewis wrote in his decision.
“The undertaking and the dissolution of the relationship between [Jalloh] and YB were part of the immediate backdrop to his having thrice wrongfully looked at het confidential information in breach of his professional duties.The tribunal members were entitled, and indeed should be expected, to consider such circumstances surrounding [Jalloh’s] improper actions.”
But while Lewis rejected all of the substantive portions of Jalloh’s appeal, he also found that the council had been somewhat sloppy about ordering the “cancellation” of Jalloh’s licence for a fixed term of four years. He ordered that the decision be amended to include the word “suspended,” meaning that Jalloh could apply for reinstatement of his licence upon the end of the four-year term.
