The BBC has a write up on HSBC getting hit with £3m in finesrelated to data loss.  On 2 separate occasions, firms within HSBC sent unencrypted customer information via snail mail!  The second instance, in February, 2008, represented 180,000 customer records of policyholders of HSBC Life.

Financial institutions are actually usually pretty good about following best practices.  They almost always encrypt data and usually safeguard it quite well.  These cases are actually probably indicators of an uneducated group of employees who weren’t following the guidelines set out by their firms. 

These occurrences underscore the importance of having good policies to protect your data, including encryption of customer information during transmission (even very analog transmission via envelope and courier) and proper backups!