Insurers are required to conduct business practice reviews (aka audit or assessments) of contracted advisors. The purpose of these reviews is to confirm the advisor is meeting their regulatory and contractual obligations and has implemented a compliance program. The CLHIA developed a standardized questionnaire used by the industry for this purpose.
The questionnaire is not difficult to complete. The advisor is required to attach evidence to support their answers. In some cases, the Insurer may ask for advisor client files relating to policies they have issued. The purpose of this is to ensure that the compliance documents provided are actually in use within the advisor sales process.
Where the advisor has not managed the requirements of their compliance program, the advisor will be asked to provide an explanation and commit to a reasonable time frame for implementation. Currently, this exercise is designed to motivate any advisors who have not already done so but advisors should be aware that any continued lack of adoption will have more severe consequences in the future.
All of the tools required to implement a compliance program are available in HUBLINK. HUB encourages advisors to identify and address each of their requirements and to make use of the reference documents and tools which have been made available. Remember! Although HUB provides templates, advisors are required to read and amend these templates as necessary to fit and describe their businesses. Simply printing a template from HUBLINK will not satisfy this review.
Remember,
Good Business is Compliant and Compliance Matters!