Pub. 3 2012 Issue 2

summer 2012 11 customer wait for an employee to be free, the guard key was of- ten given to the customer so he could enter his box. A husband and wife had a joint box. The husband then owned another box that the wife could not access. The husband claimed that his wife had taken some stock certificates out of his box. The bank’s procedure of allowing customers to have access to the guard key made it a possibility that the wife could have taken the husband’s key and opened his box after signing to enter the joint box. This resulted in the bank being in the middle of a nasty divorce. In another case, the bank allowed bank officers to take the guard key to enter their own boxes without signing in. A rela- tive of a bank officer claimed that property was stolen from his box and claimed that the bank officer may have taken his key and then entered his box. The officer denied he had been in any box for months. Because the bank allowed officers to enter boxes without another employee controlling the guard key and without signing to enter, the relative made it appear that the officer was dishonest. No one should ever be allowed to enter any box without signing or without another employee controlling the guard key. Some banks have one-key boxes and entry to the vault is al- lowed by computer, which requires inputting the box number and a comparison of the size of the hand. Assuming a compar- ison of the hand size is adequate proof of identification (which is doubtful), this procedure does not prevent someone from getting into any box with a stolen customer key once he enters the vault to access his own box. Such safe deposit box systems that do not require two keys are not adequate and often cannot be insured. When the bank is designing and following its safe deposit box procedures, all employees should keep in mind that they need to be in a position to tell the customer that bank controls make it impossible for someone to have entered the customer’s safe deposit box without signing the entry records. Proper pro- cedures can help jog an honest customer’s memory, thereby preventing a problem, as well as protect the bank against dishonest customers claiming something is missing.  The Kansas Bankers Surety Company has been serving community banks for over 100 years and is rated A++ (Superior) by A.M. Best For more information, please give us a call at (785) 228-0000.