ONE of Hampshire's biggest employers has been hit with a £1.26m fine after a failure to protect customers' confidential details exposed almost seven million people to fraud.

Norwich Union Life was hit with the penalty after fraudsters netted £3.3m using publicly available data such as names and dates of birth to gain customer-sensitive information from its call centres.

The criminals used the details to cash in the policies of 74 customers of Norwich Union Life, which employs 2,200 people in Hampshire including 1,000 in Eastleigh and 370 in Southampton.

In total, the criminals targeted 632 of Norwich Union Life's 6.4 million customers.

Margaret Cole, director of enforcement for the FSA said: "Norwich Union Life let down its customers by not taking reasonable steps to keep their personal and financial information safe and secure.

"This fine is a clear message that the FSA takes information security seriously and requires that firms do so too."

Her investigation found Norwich Union Life had failed to assess the risk of fraud against its customers, leaving them "more likely to fall victim to a number of financial crimes such as identity theft".

It revealed the insurance giant had failed to address the issues highlighted by the frauds in an "appropriate and timely manner, even after they were identified".

Ms Cole added: "It is vital that firms have robust systems and controls in place to make sure that customers' details do not fall into the wrong hands.

"Firms must also frequently review their controls to tackle the growing threat of identity theft."

Mark Hodges, chief executive of Norwich Union Life, said the lapses were "clearly unacceptable". He said: "We are sorry that this situation arose and apologised to the affected customers when this happened."

He added that Norwich Union had fully reimbursed the 74 customers hit, and co-operated with the FSA and police to tackle the fraud. There have been 11 arrests so far.