What are the banks up to with privacy?

ST. CLOUD, Minn. - Credit unions are driving hard to the Web offering everything from portals to online lending, but what are their community bank competitors up to? According to a recent survey by Bankers Systems, privacy is the name of the game for community banks right now. The study of 1,400 professionals in the industry found that 46% of them are working on privacy policies. Another 8% said their policies are almost complete. Public relations benefits seems to be the reason for the privacy policy push. Respondents said they want to get their policies out as soon as possible for marketing purposes. Some 52% said they expect to implement their policies this year, with another 31% looking at the first quarter of 2000. Only 17% said they would make it by July 1 of this year. Forty-six percent of respondents said they know that their customers are "moderately" concerned about privacy, with 21% saying it's a major concern. Interestingly, as far as the difficulties in launching a privacy policy, 35% said creating it is the toughest thing to do; 27% said providing the notices to consumers would be the most difficult aspect; while 38% said training staff to abide by the policy would be the biggest challenge. The study was conducted by Bankers Systems, St. Cloud, Minn.