Will CCIR ask insurers to overlook market conduct of their brokers?

Canada’s insurance regulators are contemplating market conduct surveys in the spring of 2007 that might ask insurance companies what they are doing to oversee the market behaviour of the brokers and sales intermediaries acting on their behalf.

This is a development of which brokers should be aware, Dominion of Canada General Insurance Company president and CEO George Cooke told an Insurance Brokers of Toronto & Region luncheon in February.

Cooke noted brokers already have a self-regulatory model in Ontario, the Registered Insurance Brokers of Ontario (RIBO), and the model is “second to none.”

“The problem is that in many other provinces of Canada, there is no RIBO,” Cooke told more than 100 brokers who attended the IBTR luncheon.

“And what I don’t want to see happen is companies getting forced into a RIBO-like role with the intermediaries with which they do business in those other provinces,” he added.

“Whatever else I might like to do on a go-forward basis, becoming your regulator is not one of them.”