I am conducting an audit of our Internet Banking system and one of the audit procedures refers to reviewing customer agreements/contracts that set forth the rights and responsibilities of the bank and the customer. Does anyone use a specific contract or agreement for internet banking customers.

Currently, we give them the same account agreement and disclosures for deposit accounts that we give to all deposit account holders.

Should we be doing more?

You can see the various agreements most banks offer specifically for the IB agreement on their sites.

There may be some special considerations addressing security, use and perhaps bill pay. The stop payment requirements may differ as well as specific lead time to have the bill paid on time. If not paid on time there may be a guarantee that covers any late charges.

There may also be a paragraph that refers back to the bank's standard Deposit Agreement and indicates which takes precedence if there is a conflict.

We do have a separate online agreement and disclosure plus a separate online application that applies to our consumer customers. We have all of the above for our business customers using our online services. Our normal account disclosure and agreement does not cover all facets of our online banking services.

Several banks I work with have verbaige in their Internet Banking Agreements that state it's the customer's responsiblity to have up-to-date virus-detection and firewall software installed on their PC, prior to using the Internet Banking System (IBS). The agreements also state that using the IBS without such safeguards increases the risk that a Hacker will break-in to their system, and comprise their IBS user-ID and password.

In doing your audit of the IBS, make sure that you check how customers are setup to use the system. A lot of customers want "View Only" access, but, the bank inadvertently gives them "Full Transaction" access. I know of a few banks that are having commercial customers dispute transactions done with the IBS, after the customers instructed the bank to allow "View Only" access.

Regards,
Wayne Barnett, CPA
wbarnett@barnettcpa.com
800-680-8692

Wayne Barnett Software
wbarnett@barnettsoftware.com
877-945-4344

Like Andy mentioned, many bank's make their contract/agreement available online through their IB. When our bank began the process of developing our IB system, I went to many bank sites to see what they were covering in their agreements. I found that many are generally the same, just that each bank does have to modify the language to your circumstances. For example, we created seperate agreements for consumer vs commercial accounts because the commercial accounts have more transactional capabilities than the consumer modules, therefore more security procedures needed to be incorporated. Just to highlight some of the issues addressed which might lead you in the right direction would be to look for the agreement to address; Account access, Linking of accounts, email policy, services offered, security procedures,reporting unauthorized transactions, rights and responsibilities for both parties, and privacy statement. Hope this helps.