Sun Life client information found dumped
A $6,000 fine handed down to a local financial adviser this summer wasn’t the first bit of trouble encountered in recent years by that branch of Sun Life.
Four years earlier, a janitor working in the building found a wayward package containing personal information regarding possibly hundreds of Sun Life clients and reported the matter to the company and B.C.’s privacy commissioner.
Ron Holmes was reminded of the incident after reading in the the Herald in September how Neil Robert MacDonald had been nailed by the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada for breaching regulations related to the handling of clients’ paperwork.
Back in May 2014, Holmes was working as a janitor in the Skaha Lake Road strip mall that houses the Sun Life office when he went to empty paper into a recycling bin behind the building.
“As I was throwing in paper, I noticed this package there. A white package, an unopened package,” he recalled.
“Then I opened it up and realized it was all personal documents for Sun Life.”
Holmes said the package contained completed forms detailing hundreds of clients’ social insurance numbers, financial assets, beneficiaries, personal information and much more.
Realizing the harm that could result from the information falling into the wrong hands, Holmes grabbed the package and returned it to Sun Life, which subsequently pinned the blame on a mail carrier.
“Why the hell would the postman go to the back of the building and throw documents away?” said Holmes, who never bought the explanation.
He also alerted the B.C Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, which found no harm resulted from the incident and that Sun Life followed proper protocol to contain the potential privacy breach.
In a statement to The Herald, Sun Life maintained it conducted a “thorough investigation” in relation to the “misplaced Canada Post parcel” and that client information “was not compromised.”
Four years later, Holmes remains disappointed with the outcome and hopes the incident serves as a reminder for people to be careful about whom they entrust with their personal information.
“I could have quite easily gained financially, but that’s not the point. The point is a whole bunch of people had their financial information compromised and nobody’s head’s going to roll?” he said.
“This was a criminal act, I think, in one way or another, and someone should be responsible. I should have gone to the RCMP.”
Sun Life’s statement also said the privacy breach was “completely unrelated” to the matter involving Macdonald.
According to an agreed statement of facts filed in his case, Macdonald used six presigned forms to process transactions for three different clients between December 2012 and June 2015, in violation of Sun Life and MFDA policies.
MacDonald, who didn’t profit from the wrongdoing, also admitted that between December 2012 and November 2014 he falsified eight account forms belonging to five different clients by altering trading instructions without having the clients initial the documents to confirm the changes.