Kaleido, an organization specializing in education savings, assured Wednesday that it will “compensate for all” of the sums stolen from registered education savings plans (RESPs) by fraudsters.
Earlier, Wednesday, the columnist of The PressMarie-Eve Fournier, had reported that the worst-case scenario occurred for clients of Kaleido, formerly known as Universitas: their child’s RESP had been completely stolen by fraudsters.
Linda Charrette, a long-time Kaleido client, for example, learned that there was no more money in the RESP of her daughter who is attending university. The $10,000 it contained was withdrawn on January 13. The sum was made up of interest and government grants. This is the portion called EAP, for “educational assistance payments”.
In the wake of this affair, the Financial Markets Authority (AMF) showed itself to be “very concerned about the situation” by demanding in particular “a precise action plan” from the company, which is from the region of Quebec.
The initial incident occurred on January 18, when the company’s security experts identified several “fraudulent transaction attempts in certain customers’ online accounts”.
While the “vast majority” of customers were not affected, this personal data allowed in a few cases “to access accounts and, using false proof of enrollment in studies, to make withdrawals “, concedes the group. “The personal data that was used to carry out these malicious attempts does not come from Kaleido’s systems,” she said, however.
“Today, we want to reassure our customers. Faced with a situation that unfairly compromises the future of our children, the question does not arise; the savings they have accumulated over the years are not at risk,” explained President and Chief Executive Officer Isabelle Grenier in a statement, confirming that “the sums stolen, including returns, are ‘if applicable’ will all be ‘compensated’.
Kaleido says the compensation process “will be clarified in the coming days and communicated as quickly as possible to those affected.” “Since the reactivation of the Customer Space on January 24, it has been subject to increased surveillance and according to our external security partner, no new malicious attempts have been made”, explains- we too.
Going forward, the group “undertakes to be transparent and to keep all of its stakeholders informed, as the situation allows”.