PRIORITY business intelligence

The UK insurance arm of Zurich Financial Services has been fined a record £2.275m for losing the personal details of 46,000 customers, including in some cases bank account and credit card information.

The fine, the highest ever paid by a single UK company for a data protection failing, stems from an August 2008 incident in which an outsourcing company in South Africa lost an unencrypted back up data tape, the Financial Services Authority said on Tuesday.

Zurich UK did not learn of the loss until a year later because of monitoring failures, the FSA said. At that point, senior managers informed the FSA and customers were told of the problem in October 2009.

Margaret Cole, the FSA's director of enforcement and financial crime, said in a statement: "Zurich UK let its customers down badly. It failed to oversee the outsourcing arrangement effectively and did not have full control over the data."

Source: Financial Times