There are rising financial services data breach incidents, according to the number of reports that have been made to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
In 2018, it’s understood that the number of data breaches that had been reported to the FCA had increased by a monumental 480%.
With May 2018 seeing the introduction of the new GDPR rules, punishments that can be issued for data incidents can amount to millions. On top of that, victims can be entitled to make a claim for compensation. Financial services data breach compensation amounts can be high, depending on the nature and severity of the incident.
Worries over rising financial services data breach incidents
We should be worried over rising financial services data breach. For obvious reasons, it’s a good sector to target for criminals. There’s the chance of being able to steal real money instead of information to then attempt to commit fraud, or sell the data on.
We saw from last year’s Tesco data breach that it’s possible for money to be easily stolen from real accounts as part of a cyber attack. Although money can be repaid by the banks, there’s still the stress of having your data exposed, which is something you can make a claim for as well.
Can you claim compensation for a financial services data breach?
You may be entitled to make a claim for compensation if you’re the victim of an incident. With rising financial services data breach incident occurring, the likelihood of falling victim to a breach may be worryingly high.
When you make a claim, there are various things that we look at when it comes to determining data breach compensation payout. Claims are normally formed from two parts:
- General Damages; and
- Special Damages.
General Damages is for any suffering and distress caused by a data breach. Special Damages can cover any financial losses and expenses.
Importantly, you do not have to have lost money in order to make a claim for data breach compensation. The distress alone of having your personal information exposed, and the loss of control over that information, can be severe. We take this into account when we value a data breach claim, and the amounts you can claim can be quite high.
Although each case is valued on its own merits, our figures from last month indicated an average settlement of £7,000.00 for victims claiming compensation for a data breach with us.
You can read more about data breach compensation amounts on our advice page here.
Making a claim
If you need to know more about masking a data breach claim, you can contact our team for a free, no-obligation assessment.
We offer No Win, No Fee representation for cases we can take forward as well.