Trust and confidentiality in the banking industry
SOURCE: INSIDER, NOVEMBER 2007
On a day to day basis, employees, workers and contractors working within the banking industry will have access to a huge amount of highly sensitive and confidential information about personal and corporate customers. Used improperly, this information can be exploited for illicit gain in a number of ways.
For example, in relation to retail customers, information can be used to perpetrate identity fraud. In relation to business customers, information will often be share price sensitive and could be abused for insider dealing.
Employers operating in the banking industry must therefore ensure that they have robust procedures in place at the outset to verify the identity of employees, workers and contractors. This will include thorough verification of identity and address, credit checks, right to work in the UK, academic or other qualifications as well as employment references.
All contracts of employment or engagement must then be very carefully drafted to ensure that confidentiality obligations are included, and steps must be taken to ensure that employees, workers and contractors are made aware of them.
Robust procedures must exist and must be well communicated so as to restrict access to information only to those people who need access to it in order to perform their duties and to prevent information being removed from databases in electronic or manual form. These procedures need to be well communicated so that all employees, workers and contractors are aware of their obligations.
Lastly, disciplinary procedures should be carefully drafted to ensure that employees, workers and contractors are made aware that a breach of confidentiality will normally be regarded as gross misconduct resulting in termination of the contract, and to ensure that the employer has the power to suspend the employee, worker or contractor during an investigation. Trust and confidentiality are the cornerstones of the relationship between banker and customer.
AUTHOR: ALISON GOW
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