Hong Kong Insurance Authority warns public of bogus calls

The callers are pretending to be staff from the IA to gain private information.

Hong Kong’s Insurance Authority is warning the public to be on alert from bogus phone calls pretending to be staff from the regulator.

According to the IA, the scammers would call either consumers or insurance businesses to claim that follow-up actions were required for the recipients' insurance policies or insurance business.

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The calls were either in a pre-recorded format or made by a real person.

An IA spokesperson urged the public to remain vigilant as the IA will never contact members of the public through pre-recorded phone calls nor will they request the public to provide sensitive personal information such as identification document numbers, bank account numbers, and passwords in calls.

“If members of the public receive any suspicious fraudulent calls claiming to be made by IA staff, they should not disclose any personal information to the caller but verify the situation by contacting the IA via its general enquiry hotline at 3899-9983 (select language, then press “1” > ”0”). Anyone suspecting a scam can report the case to the Police via their Anti-Scam Helpline 18222.” the IA said.