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Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Handling

What is Personally Identifiable Information (PII)?

Personally Identifiable Information (PII) may be defined as personal information that can be associated to a particular individual through some public identifier (e.g. name, address, social security number).

What PII risks are associated with Benefit Payments?

As a provider of benefit payments, J.P. Morgan requires a social security number to perform the appropriate tax withholding and reporting to regulatory agencies such as the IRS. This information, coupled with the participant’s name and address, presents an information risk that J.P. Morgan has been working to mitigate.

What is J.P. Morgan doing to protect your Plan participants’ PII?

At J.P. Morgan, risk management and the safeguarding of customer information are very important. We are committed to meeting our obligations under data privacy laws and regulations in each of the jurisdictions in which we do business. Data security is a core business concern and our internal controls, information technology risk management and data privacy programs are designed to address the regulatory requirements.
Benefit Payments is taking a very conservative approach to protecting Plan Sponsor and Plan participants’ information by:

Masking all but the last four digits of social security numbers on ALL reporting
Enhancing our on-line benefit payment system, InfoWeb, to mask all but the last four social security number digits from all viewing screens
Eliminating paper and fax delivery of benefit payment participant data
Providing training to J.P. Morgan associates in order to raise awareness

You will see these changes effective in the coming months.

What can you do to protect PII?

Plan Sponsors play an important role in protecting their participants’ PII. It is important that you familiarize yourself with the various federal and state statutes and how they impact your business. Additionally, Plan Sponsors can work to eliminate the need for PII warehousing by only requiring necessary information in employee files.

J.P. Morgan is confident that our approach to data security and PII protection will provide Plan Sponsors a highly secure benefit payment process- for both you and your Plan participants!

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