Adviser data safe dispute scheme says

A financial dispute resolution service says complainants should not be alarmed about the safety of their information after its parent company was implicated in an ACC privacy breach.

Wednesday, May 15th 2013, 4:47PM

by Susan Edmunds

Financial Disputes Resolution is one of four operating in the market. It is run by Disputes Resolution Services Ltd, which this week was accused of sending sensitive ACC documents to the wrong recipient.

ACC said it had complained to DRSL and was having discussions about how to stop it happening again.

But FDR’s scheme director, Stuart Ayres, said his organisation’s process in dealing with complainants’ personal information was a paperless process, unlike DRSL’s system for dealing with ACC complainants.

“This is an extremely rare occurrence for DRSL - we handle over 12,000 disputes per annum, involving tens of thousands of transactions of confidential information. Our business is underpinned by a culture of respect for the privacy of customers’ information and robust processes to minimise the risk of a privacy breach.”

He said as soon as the breach was notified, DRSL activated a comprehensive investigation to determine how the error arose. “At this stage we have not identified a specific cause other than simple human error. Our current focus is on finding out what happened so we can review and change procedures as necessary to prevent a similar occurrence.”

FDR was set up as the Government’s default financial services disputes resolution scheme. It will be disestablished next year under the amendments to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act.

But DRS has been approved to continue running a resolution scheme as an independent provider.

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