Anglo breached confidentiality

By Brian O’Mahony

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

STATE-owned Anglo Irish Bank top brass were embarrassed yesterday when it emerged its Belfast branch released information regarding 504 of its British business customers.

Client details were sent by email to a customer of the bank which involved a combined loan amount of €12.5 billion in borrowings the firms held through Anglo’s Belfast branch.

The details of the blunder were reported by RTÉ News which alerted the bank to the confidentiality breach late last week.

Information on the bank’s clients included account details and transactions of customers who changed their loans from one type to another.

Anglo put the blunder down to "human error" and added it was dealing with this serious breach of client confidentiality as a matter of urgency.

It has informed the Britain’s Financial Services Authority, the Information Commissioners Office in Britain and the Financial Regulator.

The bulk of the clients are British-based property development companies.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Tuesday, December 08, 2009