Stolen data: StanChart replies

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We thank Mr Francis Cheng for raising relevant and important questions ("Questions remain over bank's stolen data"; Monday) that I will try to address to my best ability.

First, we reiterate our sincere apology to all our customers, specifically our Private Bank clients affected by this incident.

Customer data protection is our responsibility and the confidentiality and privacy of our clients are of paramount importance to us. Upon establishing details of the theft, we immediately issued a media statement of apology because it was the right thing to do.

While we informed the media, the team's first priority was to contact our affected Private Bank clients to personally apologise to them and reassure them that their accounts remained intact, and provide additional options of safeguarding their data. To date, my team has managed to contact the majority of the affected clients and we are very grateful for their understanding and continued support.

Our other focus was to reassure all other customers that they were not affected and that we have not found any unauthorised transactions as a result of the statement theft, as we did not wish to cause any unnecessary alarm to them. Hence our call centres, branches and relationship managers are all equipped to reassure customers who made inquiries.

I agree with Mr Cheng that ideally, we would like to communicate details of the who, what, when, why and how of the statement theft, so that we can help to allay some of the public's fears. However, this is now a criminal case and we are not at liberty to divulge further details, which may compromise ongoing investigations by the Singapore police.

It is our responsibility to constantly improve our controls and processes, and safeguard the integrity of the industry. We adhere to strict guidelines that all financial institutions, including ourselves, have to follow in Singapore for all third-party relationships. In addition, we also subject these relationships to an external audit process.

Cybercrimes against both local and foreign organisations have been on the rise recently, and our task is to continue to work with the police to find out what exactly happened and what else we can do to strengthen the process.

Ray Ferguson
Chief Executive Officer,
Standard Chartered Bank, Singapore