. . . as policies scam prejudices insurance giant of M624 000
Mohalenyane Phakela
METROPOLITAN Lesotho has assured its customers the insurance giant will continue to pay out claims despite being prejudiced of M624 000 in an unclaimed policies scam.
This was said by Metropolitan Lesotho Managing Director Nkau Matete in a press conference convened this week after two former employees and two alleged accomplices were arrested last month for embezzling M624 000 in unclaimed insurance policies.
Mr Matete said they were able to replace the stolen money in the 13 unclaimed policies adding that the insurance giant had also tightened monitoring and security systems to ensure such incidents did not occur again.
“M624 000 is not an amount of money that would bring Metropolitan to its knees, so we were able to pump back the money that was illegally claimed from the company,” he said.
“We also introduced flagging – a system that enables us to get notifications any time a policy is claimed. The system enables us to check if the claim has been made by the right person.
“Metropolitan has also broadened its relationship with different banks as far afield as South Africa which enables us to confirm if a payment has been made to the account of the claimant.”
Mr Matete said the former employees, Motloang Mosothoane and Bafo Topisi, managed to access the money by using a list of unclaimed policies.
“We made a list of policies that had matured three years ago but had remained unclaimed. The list had been compiled to trace the beneficiaries.
“It seems the two employees, who were working as clients service consultants, got hold of that list and decided to make a quick buck.
“They would forge the documents of people on the list such as national IDs and death certificates which are required to claim money and then process the claims as if the beneficiaries had submitted the documents.
“After receiving a tipoff that the policies were targeted by fraudsters, we then flagged those accounts to monitor them.”
He also mentioned that from the list of over 1 500 unclaimed matured policies, Mosothoane, Topisi and their accomplices managed to claim only 13 and got arrested while trying to cash in from two more.
Mosothoane and Topisi were working as client service consultants in Leribe and Maseru respectively.
“Mosothoane resigned in November last year before we could gather enough evidence against him but Topisi stayed with the company. They continued to process the policies until January when we caught Topisi and brought him before a disciplinary hearing before firing him.
“However, the two did not stop after leaving the company, but continued to work with two more people from within the company. They would ask the two staffers the full details of beneficiaries and forge documents to make a claim.
“We also caught the two staffers although I cannot reveal their names since their matter is still before the internal disciplinary committee.”
Mr Matete said Mosothoane and Topisi would exploit Metropolitan Lesotho’s fax to email system in which clients could make claims online by providing South African account numbers knowing that the insurance firm would not verify the owners of the accounts. “Mosothoane and Topisi had resorted to the online route of Fax to Email to make claims but also used two other ladies who never worked with us to make direct claims at our Maseru, Teyateyaneng and Leribe branches.
“Since we were now monitoring the policies, when one lady (Motṧilisi Letjama) was trying to claim in Teyateyaneng three weeks ago, we immediately notified the police and she was arrested on the spot with Mosothoane and the other lady later on. Topisi handed himself to the police after learning of the arrests.
“We believe that the syndicate is bigger than that as there must be others who were working on forging the documents, but the matter is now being handled by the police,” he said.
For his part, police spokesperson Superintendent Clifford Molefe confirmed the arrests of the four suspects.
“The four suspects were arrested and their matter will now be handled by the courts of law. However, we are continuing with investigations ascertain if there were more people involved so they can also be brought to book,” he said.
