Manulife Financial Planner Convicted

A former financial planner at Manulife has been issued six-year prohibition orders after being convicted of a series of offences including forgery and cheating, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said. 

Under the prohibition orders, which took effect on Wednesday, Stedtson Koh Kesheng is banned from providing financial advisory services, taking part in the management or acting as director of any financial advisory firm. He is also not allowed to be a substantial shareholder of any financial advisory company or from doing business in the insurance sector.

Koh worked as a representative of Manulife (Singapore) from September 2013 to February 2015 when he duped seven people into signing contracts for new Manulife insurance policies.
He told customers that their premiums paid for existing policies with another insurer could be transferred to new policies issued by Manulife.

Subsequently, Koh forged documents to deceive the customers into believing that the cash value of their existing insurance policies had been successfully transferred to their new Manulife policies. Customers’ previous policies had lapsed because they stopped paying premiums on their previous policies believing that they only needed to pay premiums to Manulife. As a result, the premiums the customers paid for the previous policies became irrecoverable", as the policies were terminated before their maturity dates. 

Koh pleaded guilty on Feb 15 to six charges - two counts of forgery and four counts of cheating. He was sentenced to 24 weeks' imprisonment in total.