This summary does not constitute a legal opinion. The information it contains may not reflect the current state of the law.

​A firm blows the whistle on its manager. Furthermore, after this manager leaves the firm, our investigation reveals that he had committed a number of breaches of negligence, in particular that of leaving business lines clients uninsured. The whistle blowing leads to the filing of a formal complaint; the disciplinary process is currently underway.

​During the course of the investigation, we also noted a number of irregularities within the complainant-firm itself, and this leads us to open an ethics investigation of the broker-owner.

​The owner, who was also the president of the complainant-firm, was an experienced damage insurance representative. Although duly certified, he had little involvement with the day to day services provided to the firm’s damage insurance clients. “Module directors” took care of daily operations and clients were assigned to a module by alphabetical order. This structure is widely used.

Our investigation revealed that for three years, one client-module had been serviced by a non-certified employee who was not grandfathered under section 547 of the Act respecting the distribution of financial products and services (the Act).