If the consumer exercises his right to opt out of the disclosure of his nonpublic personal information, the financial institution must honor the consumer’s opt-out direction until the consumer revokes it. Furthermore, the opt-out direction applies to any nonpublic personal information collected by the financial institution that is related to the institution’s customer relationship with the consumer, even if the customer relationship has terminated. Consequently, the opt-out direction continues to be effective as to nonpublic personal information collected by a financial institution as a party in interest in a bankruptcy proceeding filed by one of its customers or former customers.

Although a debtor’s opt-out direction continues to apply during the bankruptcy process, it generally does not apply to information that is publicly available. A financial institution may consider information to be publicly available if the institution reasonably believes that the information is lawfully made available to the general public from, among other sources, federal government records. As discussed above, documents filed in bankruptcy cases are generally available for public inspection pursuant to § 107(a) of the Bankruptcy Code and current judicial branch policy. These documents include the identities of a debtor’s creditors and detailed information about his assets and liabilities. Consequently, the existence of a debtor’s customer relationship with a financial institution and the details of that relationship become publicly available as a result of a bankruptcy filing and, therefore, would not be subject to the debtor’s right to opt-out of disclosure by the financial institution

In contrast, other financial information about the debtor that is generated in a bankruptcy case may be available only to parties in interest. For instance, in a Chapter 13 case, a debtor’s record of making payments to a trustee pursuant to a payment plan generally is not the type of information that would be included in a document filed with the court. The trustee may provide this information to the parties in interest, however, so that they may verify that the trustee is distributing payments in accordance with the terms of the plan. This type of information probably would not be considered to be publicly available under the GLBA and, therefore, might be subject to a debtor’s right to opt-out of disclosure of the information.

In sum, the GLBA’s disclosure limitations appear to have limited applicability in the bankruptcy context because a large amount of information detailing a debtor’s customer relationship with a financial institution becomes part of the public record in a bankruptcy proceeding and, therefore, is outside the scope of the GLBA.

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