Mortgage company fined $16K for inadequate supervision of broker with sex offence convictions

A seaplane takes off from the harbour under low cloud above the downtown skyline, in Vancouver, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020. (Darryl Dyck / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

A B.C. mortgage broker has agreed to pay more than $16,000 in penalties for inadequately overseeing an employee with a record of sexual assault convictions.

A consent agreement between Invis Inc. and the provincial Registrar of Mortgage Brokers reached in early October and published online last week lays out an agreed set of facts and admissions about the case.

The employee is not named in the agreement, which refers to him throughout as "Broker 1."

According to the agreement, Broker 1 was charged with nine counts of sexual assault in August 2000. He was convicted of three of them and given a one-year suspended sentence, followed by one year of probation.

He applied for registration with the Registrar of Mortgage Brokers in December 2002, where he was found "unsuitable for registration" and barred from applying again for five years.

In 2018, he was registered as a submortgage broker with Invis, subject to several conditions, including that he was "prohibited from meeting in-person with any female individuals in the course of any business activities" without a designated supervisor present.

Invis agreed to these conditions, according to the consent agreement.

However, between December 2018 to September 2019, Invis employed two female assistants, and there were times when Broker 1 was left alone in the company's office with the assistants and without his designated supervisor.

There were also times, the agreement notes, that Broker 1's supervisor was present, but was not directly supervising his interactions with the assistants.

"Neither female assistant reported any inappropriate behaviour on the part of Broker 1," the consent agreement reads.

In November 2019, Broker 1 stopped working out of the Invis office and began working out of a space he had purchased in a commercial building.

The consent agreement does not specify where in B.C. Invis and Broker 1 were located. The company's website lists B.C. offices in Vancouver, Port Moody, Victoria and Kelowna. Its corporate head office is in Mississauga, Ont. https://www.invis.ca/en/contact-us/

Because he was no longer working in the Invis office, Broker 1 could no longer be supervised on a day-to-day basis, the consent agreement notes.

Both the lack of supervision in the office and the fact that Broker 1 was allowed to work out of his own office constituted breaches of the conditions on his registration, according to the agreement. They also constituted conduct that was "otherwise prejudicial to the public interest."

The consent agreement lists several aggravating and mitigating factors that informed the size of the penalty issued against Invis.

"While there was no specific public harm as there is no evidence that Broker 1 dealt with any

females in an inappropriate manner, there was some risk of harm," the agreement notes, adding that the lack of supervision occurred "over the period of several years."

In the company's favour, the agreement notes that it has been registered continuously since 2000 and has no previous discipline history. Also, the misconduct was not fraudulent or dishonest, and there was no harm to the public resulting from it.

Ultimately, the registrar and Invis agreed that the company should pay a $12,500 administrative penalty, plus $3,591.92 representing the cost of the registrar's investigation of the case.

Broker 1 is no longer employed by Invis and has not applied to renew his registration since parting ways with the company, according to the consent agreement.