PEMBROKE : Sun goes public

There were some red faces at Sun Alliance this week. A foul-up at the £2.5bn insurance giant resulted in confidential policyholder records, bound for the insurance broker Hill House Hammond, being sent to a journalist on a national newspaper inst ead.

The records carry addresses and details of individuals' valued possessions for insurance purposes. Some would say that a security leak of this nature represents a thieves' charter.

David Watts, projects manager, said that everything was being done to trace the security failure. "It seems likely that the journalist's address was taken off a policy and put in as the broker's address." What a bizarre excuse.