http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=afw8zxz12Koo
By Hugh Son
July 26, 2007
(Bloomberg) -- Aflac Inc., the world's largest seller of supplemental
health insurance, said a laptop containing information on 152,000
customers in Japan was stolen from an employee of an insurance agency
there.
The laptop contained the clients' names, addresses, birth dates, and
policy details, according to Laura Kane, a spokeswoman at Aflac's
headquarters in Columbus, Georgia. It was used by a worker of
Tokyo-based Tsusan Company and stolen on a commuter train July 17. Aflac
wanted to send letters apologizing to policyholders before alerting the
press, she said.
``All the information was encrypted and password-protected, so it would
be very difficult for any third-party to access it,'' Kane said today.
``Obviously we've reported this to the police and they are making every
effort to find the missing laptop.''
Aflac, which gets three-quarters of its revenue from Japan, insures
about a quarter of the population there and has more than 40 million
customers around the world.
The shares of Aflac had the biggest decline in the Standard & Poor's 500
Insurance Index today after being the biggest gainer yesterday, when it
rose on better-than-expected second-quarter sales in Japan. The stock
dropped $2.87, or 5.1 percent, to $53.32 in New York Stock Exchange
composite trading.
Steven Schwartz, an analyst at Chicago-based Raymond James & Associates,
lowered his stock rating to ``market perform'' from ``outperform,''
saying yesterday's 8.3 percent increase brought it closer to his
12-month target of $57.
Received on Fri Jul 27 01:22:30 2007