Apr 2019 Issue No.266
New Governing Committee
T
he Annual General Meeting held on 30 April 2019 approved the formation of the new Governing Committee of the Federation for 2019/2020 as follows: Chairman Deputy Chairman Members Ms Charity Au Mr P L Chan Mr Praveen Daswani Mr Eric Hui Mr Mike Lee Mr Guy Mills Mr Edward Moncreiffe Mr Jimmy Poon Mr Ivan Tam Ms Winnie Wong
New Member
Industry Development and Regulatory Training
Ltd for joining HKFI as a Life Insurance Member.
With the envisaged advent of DLR, our Training Unit
A warm welcome to Well Link Life Insurance Company Insurance (Maximum Number of Authorized Insurers) Rules
The Insurance Authority (IA) has just released the
consultation results and the final version of the above Rules. We are pleased to note that our regulator has taken into account our comments / suggestions of keeping the status quo, i.e. a licensed insurance agent would only be allowed to carry on regulated activities for a maximum of 4 authorized insurers, of which no more than 2 are long term insurers.
As regards the existing practice of requiring agents to seek prior consent from their appointing insurers, this will continue and we are now finalizing the relevant details with the IA (Circular Ref: Mv029/19)
Handing over SRO functions to IA
We have been working closely with the IA in the
past months on the transitional arrangement. Things are progressing well and we have signed off on a couple of work items including the commencement of stock-taking by IA of agents’ records, etc.
In the meantime, the Insurance Agents Registration Board (IARB) continues with the licensing of agents and handling of complaint cases. To ensure a smooth transition to the Direct Licensing Regime (DLR), we are now trying to work out in collaboration with the IA a suitable, practical cutoff date for the processing of agents’ registration. On this we will provide you with more details soon after Government’s announcement of the official commencement date of the DLR.
is moving full steam ahead to develop a set of training materials with special focus on the relevant new guidelines and codes on market conducts. With the professional support of our legal counsel, a series of face-to-face regulatory training will be launched to prepare agents and brokers for the new DLR. To know more about these new CPD courses and how they could help your intermediaries, please contact us at training@hkfi.org.hk / 2861 9337.
At the same time, we are also developing brand new e-CPD programmes under the DLR, which proposed to increase CPD hours from 10 to 15 while allowing 5 hours to be conducted via online platform. Thanks to the support of the IA and other stakeholders, we have made good progress in designing our e-CPD programme and it is set to be launched on a pilot basis by the end of the year.
Greater Bay Area
On 23 April 2019, HKFI Chairman Mr P L Chan
attended a meeting in Zhuhai convened by the Guangdong Munic ipal Financ e Bureau and exchanged views with the Mainland authorities on setting up customer service centre in the special economic zones for Hong Kong insurers.
While we are awaiting more details from the relevant authorities, we would like to understand the needs and expectations of Member Companies. In this connection, we are conducting a member survey (circular Ref: Mv037/19) and would appreciate your feedback by 2 May 2019.