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Roderick Woo said an investigation had been launched by his office into the loss of a digital tape being sent by courier from HSBC bank's service centre in southern China to Hong Kong.

The tape contained calls between bank staff and customers in April mostly about credit card and internet banking, and was one of 55 tapes being sent to Hong Kong in June when it went missing.

The bank insisted the tape was encoded and access to its contents would require specialized hardware and software, making the list of customers' personal details being used for fraud low.

But Woo told legislators at a meeting Friday that he was very concerned about the loss of the digital tape and would carry out an investigation.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority also expressed concern at the incident and said it had launched its own investigation into the loss of the data.

HSBC uses a service centre in Guangzhou, southern China, where wages and overheads are considerably lower than in Hong Kong, to deal with calls from Hong Kong customers.

The incident is the second security embarrassment for HSBC in recent months, after it lost the details of 159,000 accounts during renovations at a branch in Hong Kong's Kwun Tong district in April.