Investment solutions company: Is Your Personal Data Secured?

UK (SANEPR.com) April 28, 2008 -- London (Index Asset Management) 28th April, 2008: Recently, U.K. pharmacy chain Alliance Boots Ltd. said that bank account details of 27,000 customers in its dental plan were stolen this month.

Now, these kind of cases are happening every now and then and that's why each investment solutions company is striving for having an adequate data-security management system.

Also, according to the U.K.'s financial regulator, banks, insurance companies and lenders aren't doing enough to ensure that customers' personal data is protected from identity thieves. Now, companies that fail to encrypt data on laptop computers that are taken out of offices may face enforcement action, London financial services authority (FSA) warned in a report.

The FSA's Director of Financial Crime and Intelligence Philip Robinson said, “despite increased public awareness of the impact that identity theft can have on customers, many firms are still not taking this risk seriously.”

Now, the FSA has been taking a hard line on data-security lapses and in fact in December, it fined Aviva Plc's Norwich Union unit 1.26 million pounds ($2.5 million) for failing to protect customers from identity theft. It was one of 56 cases of lost or stolen customer data from financial-services firms and investment solutions company that the FSA investigated in 2007, according to the report.

“These were only the losses which were reported to us by firms or identified by the team,” the report said. It is “highly likely that many data loss incidents go unreported.”

Therefore before opting for an investment solutions company always ensure that you are not prone to data theft and the company has a good data security management system.