A Question of Privacy
Tuesday, July 17th, 2001 Risk ManagementMailboxes throughout the West have been rapidly filling with literature outlining the "Privacy Policy" of virtually every organization that has ever taken a credit application. As the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) takes hold, predictions of massive corporate mergers, acquisitions and blending of databases within the financial services industry have not materialized. In fact, the largest beneficiary of the new law to date seems to be an increasingly busy U.S. Postal Service. Privacy was just one element of the Financial Services Modernization Act that bounced around Congress in one form or another for almost 30 years. The new law allows insurance companies and the brokerage firm affiliates of banks to share consumer information, on the condition that they first inform customers of the diverse nature of their services.
