Our office is seeking input from the community regarding areas of concern or gaps that map need to be addressed in how new privacy laws interact with financial regulations. Developing guidance on best practices should be a collaborative, multi-stakeholder process, and that the best way we can protect individuals’ privacy rights is by ensuring the practices make business sense, too.

The financial services community are invited to provide your input and to participate in a meeting on 25th March to discuss and explore the intersection of the pending Personal Information Protection Act (“PIPA”) https://www.privacy.bm/, due to come into effect on 1st January 2025, and financial obligations under the relevant AML/financial crime legislation, such as  https://www.bma.bm/document-centre/policy-and-guidance-aml-atf.  The aim is to identify any areas of potential inconsistency or gaps which may need to be addressed to ensure that both legislative and regulatory requirements complement each other, enabling our businesses to operate efficiently, effectively and with regulatory certainty.

Financial services is an important sector Bermuda, and the largest contributor to the Bermudian economy.  With Bermuda’s PIPA due to come into effect on 1st January 2025 (joining 2/3 of all other countries with privacy legislation), the countdown is on the ensure not only appropriate operationalisation of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (PrivCom), but also to review how the PIPA interacts with existing legislation, regulation, and regulators. Our goal is to ensure a collaborative and coherent approach between PrivCom and other regulators to enable a joined up approach to data regulation and help to avoid overlapping or divergent approaches or duplicate enforcement.

The purpose of the meeting scheduled for 25th March 2024 is to reflect on the contributions requested of each of the sectors subject to anti-financial crime obligations who provide their comments in advance on any areas which may require clarification or guidance on the intersection of the PIPA and other requirements.

The meeting on 25th March will be hosted by PrivCom and led by Vivienne Artz OBE, Senior Data Strategy & Privacy Policy Advisor to the Centre for Information Policy Leadership and specialist in the privacy and anti-financial crime issues.

The outcome is to identify and create an action plan to address any areas of concern to ensure a smooth transition of the PIPA into effect on 1st January 2025 for our businesses in Bermuda.

Thank you for your willingness to offer your insights so that we may best meet the goals of PIPA while ensuring that, as we say, “Privacy Means Business.