25 September 2025
The Insurance Authority (IA) has banned Ms So Yuen Wa (Licence number: IG3140) from being an insurance intermediary for 50 months.
Ms So provided misleading advice to two clients that her appointing insurer would acquire the policies they were holding for the purpose of inducing them into giving up their policies and obtaining replacements. As a result, they surrendered three critical illness and long term saving policies and bought eight new ones from her. Ms So made no disclosure that de facto policy replacement was involved, impersonated one of the clients to enquire about her policies and pocketed the surrender value instead of paying it into the new policies. Nonetheless, almost all the funds involved were subsequently repaid by Ms So.
Policy replacement is a serious decision that carries far-reaching implications on the interest of policy holders. In this specific case, the clients were deprived of protection offered by their original policies and lost the opportunity to reinstate them. We urge members of the public to take extreme care when being asked to surrender their policies. Insurance intermediaries should also take heed of the fact that deceptive or unethical practices concerning policy replacement will attract severe penalties imposed by the IA.
Further details are available at the section titled “Enforcement News” and the Register of Licensed Insurance Intermediaries on the IA website.
Ends