ARE YOU a criminal without intent? If you are an agent in the forwarding sector, or a furniture remover - collect cargo insurance premiums from clients, and pay them on to the insurer as part of your disbursement business - you are very likely to be breaking the law.
If, from January 1, you haven't had letters of authority (allowing you to collect their premiums) from all the insurers with whom you do business, and you are not a member of the Intermediaries Guarantee Fund (IGF), the Financial Services Board in the Department of Finance could, quite-legally, be down on you like a ton of bricks.
You'd probably plead innocent through ignorance if you haven't heard that Section 20 bis of the Insurance Act was amended last year - and now demands these qualifications from all businesses which collect premiums from the insured to pass on to the underwriter of the policy concerned. It wasn't aimed specifically at you - the forwarding agent/furniture remover going about his traditional business. The amendment was aimed at the less-reputable amongst insurance brokers who collect premiums from clients but don't pass them on to the insurer.
And this is really a very easy crime to conduct. A broker collects the premium from the insured, but - given that this is a 30-day credit business world - he didn't need to pay the cash to the insurer right away. And often, because he knows that the cargo has arrived safely, he doesn't complete the transaction, and pockets the cash instead. But - because you conduct the same premium collection procedure, and were not exempted in the amendment - you must now fall under the same law. It all stems from a problem in the original Insurance Act, according to Caroline da Silva, executive director of the SA Insurance Association (SAIA).
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