Christchurch-based Integrity Advisers Insurance engaged in “serious misconduct” handling clients who wanted to cancel their life policies and its licence has been revoked, the Financial Markets Authority says.

“Contrary to its name, this firm lacked any integrity with its clients,” the New Zealand regulator’s director of specialist supervision and response Peter Taylor said.

“Cancelling Integrity’s licence is one of the strongest tools the FMA can use against a [financial advice provider] and sends a clear message that this sort of conduct is not acceptable.”

FMA found breaches relating to clients who wanted to cancel their policies between September 2022 and June last year.

Integrity had to surrender the commissions it had received to its insurance providers when clients cancelled their policies. While the business did disclose the potential recovery of fees to clients at the start of the engagement, FMA says: “Integrity unfairly pressured affected clients to retain their respective policy by issuing them with an invoice which gave them only seven days to reinstate their insurance policy or pay a fee.”

The FMA investigation found the fee Integrity charged clients was greater than was permitted in the advisory’s fees policy, and in some cases equal to the commission it lost.

Integrity told some clients that failure to pay the fee would result in it reporting them to immigration authorities. The business provides financial advice to about 500 retail customers, many of whom are from the Filipino community.

The FMA says the advisory also tried to mislead its investigators by altering an invoice before providing it.

Integrity denied engaging in significant misconduct; it said invoicing errors were inadvertent or not material; and it also denied misleading clients or the regulator, according to FMA.