The insurance company Link4 sent an open letter to its agents, who cooperate with the company. Link4’s Board refered to the situation where cooperating insurance agents also work with compensation offices.
“This problem affects the whole market, but until this time only Link4 and Ergo Hestia have officially decided to oppose this situation via the media” Tomasz Tarkowski, Link4’s Chairman stated.
The authors evoked in the letter examples of the double activity of agents. Firstly, agents run a double business or the owners of compensations companies are members of their family. There are also examples of organized groups of agents where some of them work in two companies: for an insurer and a compensation office.
The Chairman of Link4 stated in the letter that ‘representing a compensation office suggests that is necessary to use an agent’s services to receive compensation based on an insurance contract. The double activity of agents means for the insurance companies a conflict of interest’.
Tarkowski indicated that, according to the regulations of the Personal Data Protection Act, a client’s data cannot be processed for any other purpose than that which they were obtained from their owners. But in this situation, the agents use the data obtained from clients with the aim of concluding and realizing an insurance agreement. Next they pass this data on to compensation offices to pursue claims.
Link4 announced that in a situation where double cooperation of an agent is discovered, the case will be analysed and a decision of further cooperation will be announced in the next step. Currently, there are several cases of such abuse under consideration.
The insurance company cooperates with several agent’s firms. Link4’s insurance is sold by 15,000 people.
“We believe that our arguments will meet with our agents’ understanding and eventually conflicts of interest will be eliminated without the necessity of Link4 intervention”. Tomasz Tarkowski said.
The issue of compensation offices was raised by The Financial Ombudsman, who sent a proposition of new regulations of this market to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Justice. So far the second institution has published a negative opinion about this project.
