Sometimes the simplest error or typo can create legal ownership, insurance and access issues for your accountholder.  If you do not sign the signature card on a joint account, it is not insured by either the FDIC or NCUSIF.  Or if you add notes to the cards or add signers after the fact, many times you can create liability for your financial institutions. 

When you open accounts, you are tempted to accommodate accountholder wishes and needs in ways that create liability for your financial institution.  These do's and don'ts may save your financial institution thousands of dollars in the future.  These 10 fundamental rules will keep your officers and your account representatives from creating liability and future losses on the deposit side of your organization.

• When small favors for customers can cost the financial institution big liability
• Why you cannot give money to someone who has not signed the signature card
• Why checks have to match accounts
• When do you have to retype the signature card and when can it go with small changes
• When does it matter which disclosures you give on new accounts?
• Typos, whiteout, initialing and other issues that can cost the financial institution big time
• The impact of lack of signatures on your contracts and how that affects insurance
• When failure to read the contract and follow it can be significant-closing accounts, rights of offset, and other issues in the contract
• How to set up signers, power of attorney's and other important fiduciary relationships so you won't confuse ownership
• Common errors on ownership types and how that can create big problems on deceased accounts
• Account stylings and taxpayer identification numbers-at $50 per error, how many can you afford?
• And much much more

New Account Representatives, Personal Bankers, Branch Managers, Branch Operations, Training and Customer Service Representatives.

Deborah Crawford is the President of gettechnical inc. She specializes in compliance and regulations for the deposit side of financial institutions. Her 20+ year career in banking and training began at Hibernia National Bank. She has been a seminar leader for many state associations and credit union groups across the nation. She has Bachelors and Masters degrees from Louisiana State University.