Stories from Work-4

 I worked in life insurance company LICI from 1991 to 1997. I am reminded of two incidents with a common thread of fake things linking them.

I was working in the New Business Department and the role was to check life insurance proposal papers submitted by Agents and Development Officers (DO). They sell insurance to potential customers and get the relevant papers signed and collect payment cheques as a service to the customer. So one fine day, I found that three proposal forms had signatures of the policyholders missing in supporting documents. I called the DO concerned and brought this to his notice. Without batting an eyelid, he said, "Sanjay, by chance, these three policyholders are sitting with me. Let me go and get their signatures." I smiled back and gave the papers to him. And he came back in 2 minutes with all the signatures. Actually, it was an open secret that for supporting documents etc., if a signature was missing, the marketing person will affix the fake signatures himself, instead of taking the trouble of going to the house of policyholder and getting the signature. Of course, for main papers, no one indulged in such a practice. In the instance I described, if the DO had waited to go to policyholders and get signatures, he would have not been able to get these three cases completed in time for a contest and month ending.

Another incident was a serious one. Fire extinguishers in our office were nearing expiry date and needed to be refilled. So, our office called the OEM helpline number and registered a request for refilling. After some days, two guys came to collect the cylinders for refilling. They gave us a receipt mentioning that they had collected the cylinders. After some days, when we enquired from the OEM as to when will the refilled cylinders be returned, they said that they had not been able to send anyone till then to collect the cylinders. That baffled us. Because we had contacted the OEM only and there was a receipt also. The files were taken out, opened and checked. On close scrutiny along with the OEM team, it was found that some fraudsters had used photocopy of OEM letterhead and issued the receipt. Now the information about request for refilling of cylinders could have been leaked and it enabled the fraudsters. So fake receipt and fake signatures led to a crisis.