What's the big deal?
1) This article should have highlighted it was HSBC Life Insurance not HSBC Bank to avoid all the confusion.
2) There would have been no identifiable personal data in the lost CD. The most that was lost is policy number, sex, DOB, smoker status, sum insured and such like. Reinsurers do not need to know bank details, names and addresses. This data on it's own cannot be used for identity theft. This is not comparable to Nationwide's open laptop.
3) This would have been monthly data as the reinsurer needs to carry out calculations to figure out how much HSBC needs to pay them every month so that might be why they didn't wait till the electronic link was fixed and improvised. Although this is not an excuse.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
