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Plays
Nice and Shares Well with Others Bankers
Systems, Inc., recently analyzed the personal data sharing practices and timing
intentions of nearly 2600 banks, thrifts, credit unions and finance companies.
73.7% of the sampling of banks and savings associations indicated they would not
be sharing customer information with nonaffiliated third parties. Credit
unions and finance companies showed a greater propensity to share. Fifty-eight
percent of the credit unions sampled indicated that they would share nonpublic
personal information about their members in ways that would necessitate
disclosure and opt out rights. Finance
companies were similar to credit unions. Fifty-three percent said they would
disclose that they share, or reserve the right to share, their customers’
information with nonaffiliated third parties. Does
size matter? Yes. The
size of the institutions seems to affect whether or not customer data is shared.
The survey found that the largest institutions are three times as likely to
share information with a third party, than smaller institutions. For example,
78.3% of banks and savings institutions with more than $1 billion in assets plan
to disclose that they share or plan to share customer information with
nonaffiliated third parties. However, 24.9% of banks and savings associations
with assets under $500 million said they had such plans. How do
credit unions compare? The organization sampled credit unions with assets of
more than $500 million and found that 87% intend to share customer data. Just
57% of the smaller credit unions, those with less than $500 million in assets,
share data. Banks
might do best to publicize this fact. Since they are known for charging more
fees than credit unions and lacking the hometown feel of a local credit union,
they could market themselves as protecting their clients’ information. In
essence, the account holders are paying to have their data kept private. In
fact, according to the survey, smaller credit unions (those with assets under
$500 million) are more than twice as likely to disclose their customers’
nonpublic personal information to nonaffiliated third parties as banks or
savings associations of the same size. Does
it matter where you are? In a
word, yes. In Texas, Iowa, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi,
Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming and Illinois,
non-sharing institutions outnumber their sharing counterparts by a margin of
more than three to one. On the other hand, 61.8% of the institutions sampled in
Michigan intend to share customer data, while 53.6% of those in Wisconsin plan
to do so. When
do they give notice? It might
have occurred to you that some institutions might be waiting to send their
notices so that it could appear that they don’t share data. However, the
survey found that fewer than 5% of the institutions in our sample intend to wait
until May, just before the mandatory deadline to disseminate their first round
of privacy notices. 77% expect to finish their initial mailing by the end of
this month. Institutions
that aren’t sharing data, other than in the case of exceptions, are more
likely to provide their notices well in advance of the compliance deadline. On the
other hand, those institutions with more complex notices that include opt-out
language are less likely to mail the notices early. Therefore, the percentage of
institutions that share data could increase. For more
information visit www.bankerssystems.com
or www.privacyheadquarters.com/ |
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© Copyright 2001 · The Green Sheet, Inc. |
