Future legislation affecting financial services

The financial services industries is facing a number of important legal developments. The most publicised of these is the coming into force on 1st March, 2000 of the new Data Protection Act 1998. This is going to have a profound impact on the way in which businesses process personal data. It will, for the first time ever, apply to personal data stored in certain manual files and it will also regulate trans‐border data flows and restrict the processing of a special category of sensitive personal data. Information is the lifeblood of any business. There is no doubt that this Act is going to regulate the flow of that information and all its uses. Other developments in the pipeline include the proposed European Union Directive on the distance selling of financial services to consumers and the various legislative provisions which are being put in place to deal with the huge surge in on‐line transactions.