The telemarketing scheme
Hong Kong’s public watchdog has condemned a medical centre for collecting personal data from more than 360,000 people and selling it to an insurance broker for direct marketing purposes.
The Hong Kong Prevention Association (HKPA) were condemned for making cold calls to people, offering them a chance to join a free medical check-up scheme and asking them for personal data.
The data was transferred to Aegon Direct Marketing Services Insurance Broker, which paid HK$10 million for the data and for any kidney checks the people called may have had. In all, about 168,000 people undertook simple kidney checks, according to the South China Morning Post.
The group of thieves
Tanzania Insurance Regulatory Authority (TIRA) has taken action against 20 insurance brokers for embezzlement and started disciplinary measures against another 30 insurance agents across the country.
The country’s commissioner for insurance, Israel Kamuzora, said the unscrupulous insurance brokers did not remit insurance premiums to the companies they represented.
He said that four cases out of 50 complaints have been taken to court. One broker accused of fraud and embezzlement has been imprisoned.
Kamuzora said 20% of insurance premiums collected by insurance brokers are either remitted late or are not remitted at all. Other challenges facing the country’s insurance industry include a low level of understanding of insurance as a whole, since “some people think insurance operate as lotteries,” allafrica.com reported.
“Ghost brokers”
Okay, well they are not true insurance “brokers,” at least not in the licensed sense, but a couple was convicted for acting as “ghost brokers” for thousands of East European drivers by lying on their car insurance applications.
Elina Jaksone, 36, and Gagik Manucharyan, 40, charged motorists between £50 and €100 each to lie on their applications, so that the applicants could receive cheap car insurance. The policies were invalid because the information they contained was false.
Jaksone and Manucharyan made off with £920 and lived a lavish lifestyle thanks to their illegal form o insurance “broking,” the Times of London reported.
