Harts breaches Privacy Act
Consolidator group Harts Australasia has breached the Privacy Act, according to the Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner.
The breach relates to an incident on January 11 when an office worker discovered that a wheelie bin in Neutral Bay contained hundreds of files with details of credit cards, tax file numbers, bank statements, along with photocopies of Medicare cards, passports and drivers licences.
The files related to clients of Harts Group Financial Services. A spokesperson for the Privacy Commissioner Office says that the number of people affected was "in excess of 350".
A statement released by deputy federal privacy commissioner Timothy Pilgrim says that Harts' co-operation with the office has "adequately addressed our concerns".
"We have reached an agreement with Harts that includes an undertaking that they will contact all the people affected by this incident to apologise and offer to meet any costs they incurred in replacing documents that had been disclosed," Pilgrim says.
The statement also says that Harts will be addressing internal problems with their internal information handling practices.
The Office will be carrying out further inspection of Harts over coming months.
Recommended for you
The FSCP has announced its latest verdict, suspending an adviser’s registration for failing to comply with his obligations when providing advice to three clients.
Having sold Madison to Infocus earlier this year, Clime has now set up a new financial advice licensee with eight advisers.
With licensees such as Insignia looking to AI for advice efficiencies, they are being urged to write clear AI policies as soon as possible to prevent a “Wild West” of providers being used by their practices.
Iress has revealed the number of clients per adviser that top advice firms serve, as well as how many client meetings they conduct each week.
