ICM Group banned for client money diversion

ICM Group Ltd, which performs credit and employment checks on prospective tenants for landlords and letting agencies, has lost its permission to conduct regulated activities for mishandling client money in connection with its insurance business. The firm began to offer buildings and contents cover and policies against non-payment of rent and to meet eviction costs in March 2005. It used an online administration system to submit policies to an insurance intermediary, identified in the Final Notice as Firm ‘A’, for a short interval until ‘A’ said that it would only accept annual premium payments in future. The intermediary recommended ICM to make any monthly payments via an insurance premium financing company, Firm ‘B’, to the underwriter. ICM continued to send annual payments to A, manually after the administration system failed six weeks into use. It continued to make manual policy submissions to both A and B until October 2005 when it stopped receiving invoices for payment for policies. After prompting, the paperwork began to flow again in early 2006. The interruption led to an argument over how much was owed to A and B, in which the cover for some 300 customers was threatened. The firms claimed to be owed £35,000 and £15,000 respectively but the ICM client account only held £3642.52 in May 2006.