Thursday, August 09, 2012

Conflict of interest

It is quite difficult to manage conflict of interest, especially when the relationship seem to be somewhat distant, e.g. a cousin, and two big organizations are involved which employ many people. Article

4 comments:

  1. This can get a bit too far.
    I for one do not know all my relatives well enough.

    The witch-hunt can turn out to be just that.

    There maybe many clear cut conflict of interests within the Govt and its Agencies, if one cares and dares to point out, no?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Khuen Way,
    I can only guess that the MOHH director knew that the cousin held a senior position with the vendor, but probably felt that the declaration does not cover "cousins". It could be an "honest mistake", especially as the report said that there was no evidence of wrong doing or bias in the award of the tender.

    This is why I felt that we should not over-react to a mistake. Otherwise, we will follow the book and end up paying $2,200 for a foldable bike.

    ReplyDelete
  3. In life insurance industry conflict of interest is rampant.
    When salesmen make recommendation or push products they are invariably high commission products against the interest of the customers.
    The supervisors and managers dare not to reject cases and fearing loss of a sale and affect his record will close 2 eyes to ok the recommendation.
    The compliance department is incompetent also has no balls to reject fearing repercussion from the top ok the recommendation.
    The senior management fearing loss of sale will affect his salary will stick his neck out to say the recommendation is suitable although glaringly not suitable.
    The CEO will monitor and count the sale and egg on the agents to push harder only high commission products to boost the API so that his bonus will not be affected.
    From the salesmen to the CEO how many levels can you count. Isn't this structure multi-level and each level is paid from the premium of the customers and suffers from conflict of interest? Each level wants the highest payout. Is conflict of interest not present at every level?
    MAS must remove the layers of unnecessary cost to the consumers.
    Monkeys also know high cost means lower return and low protection. Is it a wonder there is under insurance ? Conflict of interest is the cause of under insurance.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Porcurement policies should not become too complicated as people will find loop holes and this will just make life harder for vendors and clients without preventing fraud. Example to avoid trouble the director could have purchase the services of the vendor via another vendor. This will just increase business cost and waste more time.

    ReplyDelete