ASIC has announced that The Colonial Mutual Life Insurance Society Ltd, trading as CommInsure, has been charged with 87 counts of offering to sell insurance products in the course of non-compliant unsolicited telephone calls.

ASIC alleges that the calls to CBA customers were unsolicited and that CommInsure did not comply with all of the hawking exceptions in section 992A(3) of the Corporations Act.

ASIC’s Consultation Paper 317 details ASIC’s proposal to ban unsolicited telephone sales of life insurance (including funeral insurance) and CCI by insurers and Australian financial services (AFS) licensees who sell such insurance with general advice or no advice.

CommInsure was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) at the relevant times.

ASIC alleges that between October and December 2014, CommInsure, through its agent, a telemarketing firm, unlawfully sold life insurance policies known as Simple Life over the phone. CommInsure provided customer contact details to the telemarketing firm from CBA’s existing customer database.