Ethics Case #9

[scott]

March is CPCU Ethics Month...

You work for a small insurance company. Your boss mistakenly drops his expense account on your desk. It shows a dinner with an agent for $250 for last week. You were with the agent and your boss at that dinner - it was at a small Mexican restaurant and the bill could not have come to more than $100. In the past you wondered why the boss always paid for business meals with cash.

What do you do?

[laidback]

Wow, wonder who actually pays this bill with the company? Anything on my desk, intentional or accidental is mine to deal with. I would advise my boss it appears the restaurant overcharged him for the meal and he should notify disbursement of this problem. I would also offer to go to disbursement and advise them I was there and this meal should not have cost more than $100. By offering these two suggestions, you have notified your boss you are fully aware of the possibility you think is happening. At the least, you may have stopped future price gouging. All this is hingent upon your relationship with your boss and the company. Feel more info may be needed.

[badger]

This is career suicide, I'd drop it in accounting and let it go

[Island Girl Agent]

Hmmmm...makes a good case for setting up a system that requires receipts, no? In my office, I don't care who you are and how much percentage you own (and I'm also an owner), no receipt, no reimbursement. Unfortunately, if you are in an office that has a single owner, you pretty much have to let it go. Good luck.

[CSP]

The IRS requires receipts for meal over $25 on an expense account. Sound like accounting needs to get up-to-speed.

Give the expense account back to the manager. Let him know his receipts are missing.

[wlunday]

Good Post, CSP!

Swymmer

[scott]

My intent in the case was to show that your boss was a thief.

Is that behavior you can ignore?

[insray]

Heck no, you cannot ignore it. In my experience if they are doing this once they are doing it many times. The question is how do you confront it without losing your job. I have experience something similar where in an agency I was purchasing many years ago the pricipals were adding broker fees to policies through our appointed carriers. When confronted, they told me when I was 100% owner I could do whatever I wanted, but until then I was to keep my mouth shut. The worst part was the principals were my inlaws!!! Whenever they left town and left me "in charge" I would furiously go through files and send refunds to the insureds and keep detailed documentation for my own records. It obviously caused a great deal of animosity at work and in the family, but I could not sleep at night knowing what was going on. After about a year and many consultations with lawyers I advised my inlaws they could either pay me back every penny I had paid toward my purchase of the agency, or they could step down and leave with no further repurcussions. Thankfully they chose the latter.

[independent guy]

I hate to hijack your thread Scott with a separate ethics story, but I was pretty well stunned yesterday with what one of my office's clients told me. He has his home & autos with us, then quite a few rented dwellings. He had in his words "made the mistake" of switching to other agents on price in the past, then elaborated on why he said that. I guess two of the other local independent agents had taken his money, yet he had never received policies. He said he had a claim on one, went in to the agent to talk about it when the company said he had no policy, and the CSR told him "well I guess you could just sue us!" The agent was out golfing at the time. I hear about this A LOT in my town. How do people live with themselves doing this?!?

[Shagster12]

Scott;
My reponse to your question is two-fold.
First you discuss "the apparent oversight" with the boss and then you get the heck out and try to find a boss you can trust as soon as possible!


independentguy:
That's a really good question, a better one though might be what do we as ethical professionals do to try to make sure that ALL of our industry is held to a higher moral standard. It's very frustrating as a broker to hear insurance agents having the same reputations of "Sharks" as attorneys. And wait, I know many attorneys which are appalled at the behavior of their colleagues so I'm not bashing them, but the public perception created by these behaviors leaves us with bad reputations by association. My opinion is that the DOI needs to be much more accessible and proactive in taking, investigating and PUNISHING ethical violation reports! So that as we practice proper behaviors we can identify and shut down those whom do not, up to and including loss of license, punitive damages and jail time!
Thaht's just my opinion.
Shagster