Is there a problem with allowing a customer to view their safe deposit contents within the main vault of a branch, or should they have to utilize a booth? Is this any different than those banks out there that have self-service safe deposit boxes?

Customers really should use a privacy booth. For one, it provides privacy and helps prevent the customers from claiming bank employees know what's in the box. Some scam artists will claim that the bank employees knew the customer had something valuable and they must have somehow stolen it from the box. At that point it's up to the bank to prove there are proper procedures in place to prevent such a thing from happening. Additionally, you really don't want to leave a customer alone in your vault. There are just too many risks. As Dave McQuinn has pointed out in his SDB seminars, there are tools out there that will allow criminals to open a box in less than 3 seconds. Leave the wrong person unattended in your vault for a few minutes could be disasterous.

SteveMc, do the "tools" you reference leave evidence of forced entry, or can you close the box after opening without a trace? If an employee could use these same tools to get in and out of a box that quickly, how can the bank prove that employees aren't pilfering box contents?