Marcus Agius, the chairman of Barclays Bank, has had £10,000 stolen by an identity thief.

The fraudster gathered enough personal information on Agius to convince a call centre employee to send out a replacement Barclaycard in his name. The thief took the card to a high street branch of the bank and withdrew £10,000.

"It was down to human error. Procedures were not followed fully and we have learned from it," Barclaycard told the BBC.

"All Barclays customers have a 100 per cent fraud guarantee as long as they take reasonable care of their information."

The bank has introduced a new security code word system for senior employees so that the same incident could not happen again.

Experts have already warned that 2008 will be a bumper year for identity fraudsters.