South African financier Rand Merchant Investment Holdings must contend with allegations it supported a systemic, fraudulent collection of premiums from sales targets that never agreed to buy.This tale, old news in New Zealand, arrives with a fresh Australian twist via Fairfax Media on Sunday.Interest.co.nz led off a round of reporting on Rand, RMIH and the upstart Australian and New Zealand brand, Youi.The business structure of the Rand group - Macquarie style buccaneers for a parallel - has twisted around of late on its home turf, with the Youi business aligned with the insurance side of an otherwise centrally run business.Rand's essence is a conglomerate with divergent shareholding arranagements across its banking and insurance arms, the latter redefined as investment more recently.Youi is run by Rand Merchant Investment Holdings Australian delegates.Pretoria import Danie Matthee is chief executive of Youi.Matthee was chief operating officer of OUTsurance, a domestic Rand brand, from 2002 to 2011, moving to Youi in Brisbane in January of the latter year. OUTsurance is Rand's vehicle for insurance trading in Australia. He stepped up as Youi CEO from the beginning of 2013.Ex Youi employees interviewed by Interest.co.nz said the payment system employed by Youi encouraged bad behaviour by staff. Some of the allegations from Youi New Zealand customers include:• being ambushed into handing over payment details when only looking for a quote;• having their bank accounts and credit cards charged for policies they weren't aware they'd agreed to, or had asked Youi not to activate until they said so;• being hit with repeated dishonour fees from their banks because of Youi debits they weren't expecting, because they had not believed that they'd agreed to sign up to a policy or thought it was cancelled;• sales agents (who are remunerated according to how much business they sell or retain) allegedly manipulating information in people's policies in order to make the premium acceptable, but therefore putting customers at risk of having claims declined;• emails to cancel policies not being actioned and customers not told that Youi doesn't accept email cancellations;• staff allegedly telling customers that policies have been cancelled but failing to action the cancellation in order to keep their performance-based bonuses (commission); and• staff members upselling policies instead of cancelling. Fairfax Media, in a follow on report on Sunday, added a long coda.These tactics have helped make Youi one of Australia's fastest-growing insurers. The company's total revenue has grown from A$71 million in 2011 to $654 million in 2015, IBISWorld reports show.In its 2015 annual report, RMIH said Youi Australia continued to grow its market share over 2014, with a 33 per cent increase in gross premium income. Fairfax added that "a six-month Fairfax investigation has prompted ASIC launching an investigation into the company, which has been forced to apologise to New Zealand customers for the same behaviour there. "In fact, the staff defrauding customers across the Tasman were trained in the tactics by Youi's staff in Australia."The whistleblowers also claim Australia's call centre actually made many of the illegal