The Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday fined Union Insurance Co (旺旺友聯) a total of NT$4.8 million (US$151,324) for three infractions, including failure to comply with anti-money laundering regulations.
The commission said that Union Insurance did not have adequate internal controls in place, which would make it difficult for the company to detect money laundering activities, for which it was fined NT$1.2 million.
“Typically, life insurers are more vulnerable to money laundering activities, through methods such as canceling or altering the terms of a large volume of life insurance policies, or by changing the products’ beneficiaries,” Insurance Bureau Deputy Director-General Shih Chiung-hwa (施瓊華) told a press conference.
Union Insurance was also fined NT$3 million for engaging in unfair price competition and NT$600,000 for failing to fulfill payouts to reimburse alternative transportation expenditures as stipulated in its auto insurance products, the commission said.
In related news, the commission said that Nan Shan Life Insurance Co (南山人壽) had violated the Personal Information Protection Act (個人資料保護法) after the firm leaked more than 100 clients’ data.
“We have begun investigating the insurer to find out whether the leak was caused by inadequate internal controls,” Shih said.
“Our initial findings suggest that the mishap was caused by a computer system glitch or bad database management, which occurred as the company sent out routine policy renewal offers,” Shih added.
The insurer may be fined between NT$600,000 and NT$6 million depending on the severity of the internal control lapses, Shih said.
She said that the data leak was partial and that customers’ names were matched to critical account information or national identification numbers.
The commission was tipped off about the violation by the Nan Shan Life sales union, it said.
Irate clients had lodged complaints with their sales representatives after they received renewal offers that contained other people’s insurance policy details, which prompted the union to notify the commission, it said.
Last month, Nan Shan Life was ordered to redress within 10 days a lapse in protecting clients’ personal information in the company’s e-mail marketing campaign.
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