These events have cost the financial services industry millions of dollars in direct losses and have done considerable reputational damage. The cost of identity theft to affected consumers is also significant.
Mr Ian Macfarlane, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, noted in a recent speech that, between June 1991 and December 1996, both New Zealand and Australia had enjoyed economic growth of 3.6 percent, and that that growth had been faster than growth in any of the other 16 developed countries against which he compared us, with the exception of  BIS Review 92/1997  -4-  Norway and Ireland.