An abundance of bank statements seen spilling out of a file on the sidewalk on Bermudiana Road has prompted the Bank of Bermuda to investigate its dumping procedures.

A 33-year-old and her mother were walking past the Bank of Bermuda?s Par-La-Ville branch on Thursday around 7.30 p.m. when they noticed, lying next to bags of trash, a file containing envelopes with ?First Class Mail? stamped on the front.

The woman, who wished to remain anonymous said: ?There was a file container filled with envelopes and the lid was knocked off and it was sitting next to the metal gates outside the bank.

?We noticed some envelopes on the ground and we picked some of them up and realised that they were statements, right there on the ground.?

She said when they arrived home with the envelopes they realised they were statements.

?We were looking at it and we realised this was pretty serious.

?Who knows who else may have picked the envelopes up, they were right on the sidewalk.?

She added that they noticed a garbage truck was making its way down to the street and figured it was on its way to pick up the trash.

The bank statements, one for a hair salon and the other a hotel, contained confidential information including credit card numbers of clients.

The husband of the owner of the hair salon said he was untroubled that the salon?s statement was floating around in the trash.

The man also works at Bank of Bermuda and said his knowledge of its disposal procedures reassured him.

?Because of my understanding of the disposal process of confidential material it doesn?t worry me too much,? he said.

The bank is looking into the matter, however.

A Bank of Bermuda spokesman told : ?We have a strict procedure for the disposal of documents, and in particular, client information.

?If a Bank of Bermuda document was on a street it would be most unusual. However, we are taking this matter seriously and looking into it.?

He said the bank considered the matter to be very serious and he explained it has different processes for disposal of documents depending on the type of document.

But any client document is considered confidential.