MetLife Employee Suspected of Unauthorized Info Transfers

Tokyo, March 17 (Jiji Press)--An employee of MetLife Insurance K.K., the Japan unit of major U.S. life insurer MetLife Inc., is suspected of taking information from a company to which the employee was loaned without permission, it was learned Tuesday.

This unauthorized data transfer case is believed to affect several thousand sets of information, likely making it the largest such case in Japan's life insurance industry.

MetLife Insurance is currently conducting an investigation and plans to release the findings once they are ready. The focus will be on whether the suspected misconduct was organized and whether the affected information contained personal data.

Several major insurance companies have confirmed similar cases involving employees loaned to insurance agents or banks. Last year, Nippon Life Insurance Co. found 1,543 such cases, and in February, Dai-ichi Life Holdings Inc. reported 1,155 cases.

Similar cases have also been found at small and midsize companies, indicating that unauthorized data transfers were rampant across the industry.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]