What happened: BC’s insurance regulator sanctioned an agent who admitted to falsifying 40 client addresses on auto policies in Alberta and hiding the resulting investigation when he applied for a BC licence.
Who’s involved: The Insurance Council of British Columbia and the Alberta Insurance Council.
What’s at stake: A $200,000 penalty in Alberta, $7,987.94 in BC hearing and investigation costs, and a two-year ban on reapplying for any insurance licence.
Why it matters: Cross-provincial disclosure failures can end a career – and regulators are coordinating across borders to enforce it.
Where it stands: Decided. The order took effect November 2, 2026.
Forty client addresses, all falsified on auto insurance applications to get lower premiums for clients.
That was the admitted conduct at the centre of a disciplinary hearing that has now cost a longtime insurance agent his career in two provinces, a $200,000 penalty in Alberta, and a two-year ban on even applying for a licence in British Columbia.
The Insurance Council of British Columbia released its decision on November 2, 2026, after a hearing in June. The agent, who had worked in the industry since 1989, admitted through an agreed statement of facts that he had entered false residential addresses on auto insurance applications while working at an agency in Alberta. The goal, as he told the hearing committee, was straightforward: “to take care of my family financially.”
The Alberta Insurance Council found that on 40 separate occasions the agent submitted false client addresses to insurers to secure lower rates. He also collected broker fees from clients without having written fee agreements in place. The AIC concluded the conduct amounted to “misrepresentation, fraud, deceit, untrustworthiness or dishonesty” under Alberta’s Insurance Act and imposed a penalty of $5,000 per offence – $200,000 in total.
The agent has not paid any of that penalty. He told the hearing committee he intends to begin payments once he finds work.
What set the BC proceeding apart from the Alberta case was not the underlying conduct – it was what came next. When the agent applied for a general insurance licence in British Columbia on July 4, 2023, he disclosed that the AIC had delayed his Alberta renewal. He did not mention the professional misconduct he would self-report to the AIC weeks later, on July 31, 2023.
By October 2023, the agent knew he was under formal investigation in Alberta. The AIC had emailed him on August 14, 2023, to say an investigation was open, and interviewed him the next day. Yet when he sat before the Council’s licensing committee on October 12, 2023, to discuss his application, he said nothing about it.
The committee granted him a licence. He did not tell his BC agency, either.
When later asked about the omission, the agent initially said he had not viewed the Alberta matter as a formal investigation. He eventually gave the real reason. “It was driven by fear,” he told the hearing committee. “I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to provide for my family and that I wouldn’t have an income.”
The silence held for nearly two years. In June 2025, the agent learned of the AIC’s decision and promptly notified the Council. Within a day, his BC agency had also found out – and asked that his authorization to represent them be revoked immediately. He was let go shortly after.
In a notable turn, the agency reviewed the agent’s files and transactions after his departure. It confirmed that his work in British Columbia had met the agency’s “standards of accuracy, integrity, and compliance, and that no issues or irregularities were identified.” He had not repeated the Alberta conduct.
The hearing committee acknowledged this, along with several other factors in the agent’s favour: his cooperation throughout the investigation and hearing, his full admissions, his community work running a non-profit housing initiative for people recovering from addiction, and medical evidence linking some of his earlier conduct to health conditions that have since been treated.
The Council had asked for a three-year ban on reapplying and a $5,000 fine. The hearing committee settled on two years and no fine, noting that the agent already faces the $200,000 Alberta penalty and has been out of work since his 2025 termination. It did order him to pay $1,812.50 in investigation costs and $6,175.44 in hearing costs.
The committee was direct about one point: had the agent disclosed the Alberta investigation when he applied for his BC licence, it would have been very difficult for that application to succeed. The non-disclosure did not just delay the inevitable – it created a separate disciplinary matter on top of the Alberta findings.
For compliance teams and agency principals across the country, the decision drives home that provincial regulators share information and enforce across borders. An incomplete licence application can become its own case, even when the underlying conduct happened in another province.
