[wellylug] NZ laws on Data retention

[Michael Robinson]

On Mon, Jun 20, 2005 at 11:35:31PM +1200, Rob Giltrap wrote:
> The big one is financial records for 7 years but there are other things 
> as well.
> 
> Life insurance companies must keep all records for the life of the 
> contract (which can be over 50 years).

Loans (mortgages, principally) can be contested in court up to 7
years *after* the termination of the loan contract.  So for banks,
the theoretical retention period is 37 years (30 year loan + 7).

There's no law requiring that, of course, so they don't.  As the age of
the data increases, the likelihood and cost of use decreases, and the
cost of retention increases -- past a certain point, it's cheaper to
chuck all the data and plan on settling legal cases...
    -- michael.