ABN AMRO data lost

Homeowners should monitor credit reports

If you have a home mortgage through LaSalle Bank or the former Standard Federal Bank, look out for a letter from your lender warning you about a missing computer tape -- a tape that includes your Social Security number and payment history.

Friday, ABN AMRO Mortgage Group, a subsidiary of LaSalle Bank Corp., announced that a computer tape containing data for about 2 million mortgage customers had been lost.

About 320,000 homeowners in Michigan would have been included on that tape.

The homeowners could have gotten an ABN AMRO mortgage through LaSalle Bank branches, the former Standard Federal Bank, outside mortgage brokers or ABN AMRO's own Mortgage.com.

Thomas M. Goldstein, chairman and chief executive officer of ABN AMRO Mortgage Group in Chicago, said the lender deeply regrets the mix-up but has seen no signs of identity theft or misuse of the information at this point.

"I regret that this has occurred. I feel terrible for the customers that this impacts," Goldstein said. He noted that his name and his wife's name are on that tape as well, because they, too, have mortgages through the bank.

The computer tape doesn't contain credit card numbers or any information that anyone could use immediately to buy goods.

But you never want anyone to get access to your Social Security number, because that information could help someone open fraudulent credit card accounts or other loans.

So it is important that consumers sign up for the bank's offer of a credit-monitoring service to track any odd activity.

The tape was lost last month. Courier DHL picked up the computer tape from the mortgage company's processing center on Nov. 18. The package didn't arrive as it was supposed to do at the Experian credit bureau in Allen, Texas.

Goldstein said, at this point, it does not seem that fraud was involved in the loss of the tape.

"By all appearances, it seems it is just sitting someplace in a box. My guess is, one day, when no one cares, we will find it," he said.

Through the last year, other lenders have reported such mix-ups. In June, CitiFinancial, the consumer-finance division of Citigroup Inc., notified 3.9 million U.S. customers that computer tapes containing their Social Security numbers and payment histories also were lost in transit.

After problems elsewhere, Goldstein said, ABN AMRO began an extensive project to redo the way it handles such data and make things more secure. It was converting to an electronic format that wouldn't involve courier services. And that new system for mortgage data being sent to the credit bureaus was set to go this month -- a month after the tape was lost on its way to Texas.

What are people saying about mortgages today:

Rates on 30-year mortgages edged down last week to a seven-month low. Mortgage-giant Freddie Mac reported Thursday that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages fell to 6.3 percent, down slightly from 6.31 percent two weeks ago. It put rates at the lowest level since they were at 6.24 percent the first week of March.

Bank of Hawaii, Central Pacific Bank, Territorial Savings Bank and Wells Fargo Home Mortgages all cut their 30-year mortgage rates to 5.75 percent this week.

Most people think of a mortgage as a means to an end. After all, you buy a house, not a home loan. But a mortgage is much more than the path to homeownership. It is a financial instrument that must be managed, just like any other financial investment.