Morgan Stanley said Monday it has fired an employee who allegedly stole some of the bank’s wealth management client data, a theft that affected up to 10% of those clients.
“While there is no evidence of any economic loss to any client, it has been determined that certain account information of approximately 900 clients, including account names and numbers, was briefly posted on the Internet,” Morgan Stanley (MS) said in a statement. Bloomberg, meanwhile, reports that as many a 350,000 wealth-management clients could have had their data stolen.
The bank said it detected the exposure of the data and the information was “promptly removed.” The unnamed employee has been terminated, and Morgan Stanley said it advised law enforcement and regulatory authorities about the incident.
The private information that was stolen didn’t include account passwords or social security numbers, the bank said. Morgan Stanley is also in the process of reaching out to all potentially affected clients.
Wealth management is a big business for Morgan Stanley, generating over $14 billion in net revenue in 2013 and nearly $1.5 billion in income from continuing operations. The business had $1.9 trillion in client assets at the end of 2013, and was served by a network of more than 16,700 global representatives according to Morgan Stanley’s latest annual SEC filing.
