MANILA (REUTERS) - Cebuana Lhuillier, a Philippine financial service provider, said on Saturday (Jan 19) that the data of 900,000 clients had been accessed without authorisation and that it had already alerted the authorities to investigate the incident.

The breach came as Philippine investigators were looking into allegations by the country's foreign minister last week that a privately contracted firm took away documents and data from the Department of Foreign Affair's passport database.

Cebuana Lhuillier, whose services include pawning, remittance, microinsurance, and business-to-business micro loan solutions, said some information like birth dates, addresses and sources of income, were affected in the breach involving an e-mail server used for marketing.

"It's just a very small portion of our clientele. The main server containing all clients of Cebuana Lhuillier remains protected and uncompromised", said Mr Richard Villaseran, the company's corporate communications division head.

He added the company's clients had been advised how to further protect their personal information.