Desjardins Group, a Canadian financial services provider, has set aside CAD $70M ($52m) for expenses resulted from its data privacy breach.
Earlier in the year, the company revealed an employee had collected personal customer information and shared it with external third-parties, impacting 2.7 million members and 173,000 businesses.
Following a strong quarter, the company has set funds aside for expenses and provisions for the implementation of protections.
The firm has taken a number of actions since to better protect data and its members. Its clients are now automatically protected against identity theft. Additionally, members are reimbursed up to $50,000 for certain expenses involved with recovering their identity such as notary and legal fees.
Desjardins has also added more ways for clients to sign up to Equifax, its credit monitoring plan. All assets and accounts are protected and in the event of fraud, holders will be reimbursed.
Desjardins Group president and CEO Guy Cormier said, “Our second quarter results are fully in line with our expectations, in particular due to the growth in caisse network operations.
“They demonstrate Desjardins Group’s financial strength and its ability to deal with the unexpected. Members who are worried about the privacy breach can rest assured that their cooperative protects them by providing automatic protection against identity theft to all its members. Our employees are working very hard to address our members’ concerns and needs.”
The funds announcement came alongside its quarterly report which stated it had recorded surplus earnings before member dividends of $692m, up $15m year-on-year.
Other plans for the future include a CAD $45m ($33m) strategic FinTech investment pool.
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