Ensuring insurance documents are fully protected

Ensuring insurance documents are fully protected

A number of high profile legal cases - where fines running into the millions have been levied at organisations for data protection breaches - have served to highlight the dangers the insurance industry can face if due diligence is not applied to data management.  The experiences of Aviva, Zurich and HSBC – to name but a few - provides real case in point examples of what can happen if legislation is not complied to fully.

The mismanagement of data can bring legal, commercial, regulatory and reputational penalties – particularly as media coverage of such cases like those mentioned above has served to increase the public’s general awareness of how mismanaged data can potentially be used in fraudulent activity.  Indeed  the Information Commissioners Office now has increased powers to impose fines of up to £500,000, whilst the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has even greater disciplinary powers.

There are also misconceptions in the industry that data protection should only be a concern for large organisations, or those dealing with high-net worth individuals, when on the contrary, data management should be a concern for insurance firms both large and small.

South-East based Lark Group is one organisation in the industry that is leading the way on best practice data and records management. , Divisional Director, Gerald Coetzee comments: “Data security has become a hot topic in our industry over the past couple of years and we can’t afford to be caught out.  That’s why we outsource our information management to Wincanton Records Management, using their purpose-built, highly secure facility.”

Gerald continues: “The WRM team sorted through all our historical data since 1948 to ensure that the data we no longer had responsibility for was securely destroyed and we complied fully to the FSA best practice guidelines and store the retained information within the highest standards of fire safety and security.  We use their service every day to access our client’s records and are also looking to take advantage of the document scanning service that WRM provides – converting some of our documents to digital image files, as well as using their scan-on-demand service for hard copy records.”

Lark Insurance is just one of Wincanton Records Management’s clients who understand the importance of ensuring information security.