UK banks will now have to publish complaints and security breach data as part of efforts to shake up Britain’s heavily consolidated industry.
This means that it is vital for banks to be transparent in order to increase customer trust says Fujitsu UK & Ireland, responding to the news.
Sarah Armstrong-Smith, head of continuity & resilience for the IT services and solutions provider, said: “What we’re witnessing now is the payments industry entering a period of intense structural change: for the first time banks will be forced to publish data on how many complaints and security breaches they have received.
“With the number of threats continuing to increase exponentially, customer trust has never been so valuable or hard to come by and as such it has never been more important for banks to be open and honest about their security.
“It is paramount that the industry does not overlook or get complacent about security or place it in the ‘too big to fix’ category and instead takes a proactive approach.
“An increasingly attack-prone environment means that investors, shareholders, customers and regulators will be keeping an even closer eye on how sensitive data is being handled.
“This also means that authorities and lawmakers have put data regulation at the forefront of their agenda – as seen from the enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation.
“After all, banks depend on trustworthiness to attract and retain customers. The implications for this sector of serious data breaches, or of a perception of slackness in looking after data, can very quickly lead to customers fleeing to competitors.”