Zurich loses data on 51,000 customers

Thursday 22nd October 2009

The personal account details of over 50,000 UK customers of the Swiss Insurer Zurich Insurance have been missing in South Africa for over a year, it has been revealed.

The insurer claims to have appointed KPMG to launch a full investigation into the disappearance of the back-up data tape last August.

The tape is said to also include details on a further 550,000 customers in South Africa and 40,000 clients in Botswana.

The details went missing during a transfer from a Zurich office to a storage unit in South Africa last year, but the potentially disastrous loss was only discovered recently.

Annette Court, CEO Europe General Insurance of Zurich Financial Services Group, said: "We apologise to any customers affected by this unfortunate matter. We take the security of our customers' data very seriously. What has happened is unacceptable to us.

"At this time, our first and foremost concern is our customers and we are doing all we can to support and assist them in these circumstances and have put in place a dedicated response team to help support them.

"We are implementing the necessary steps to minimise the impact of this situation on our customers. Protecting our customers' interest is at the top of our agenda. We are putting a great deal of investment into strengthening our internal processes to ensure that incidents of this nature do not happen again in the future."

Zurich has written to customers and other parties in the UK to inform them of the loss of the tape, setting out the precautionary measures customers are recommended to take.

To date though, Zurich UK claims to have seen no evidence to suggest that the data has been misused or compromised.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the UK Information Commissioner's Office have also been informed of the data loss.

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