I was wondering if anyone has good procedures for setting up accounts for organizations. We had a situation where we set up a basketball league account with a husband and wife with two signatures required. The wife forged her husband's signature, and now the account is changing signers. The new signatories have found that money is missing and bills are unpaid. I was hoping to find good procedures to maybe avoid something like this in the future.

It appears she was allowed to take the paperwork out of the bank and there was no notarization required. If you are not going to require that all parties come in to the bank, require notarization.

The only signature cards I would ever let go out of the bank are corporate accounts where the corporate secretary is setting everything up, providing resolutions, affixing seals, etc.

We stopped opening two signatures required accounts. We feel that it really shouldn't be the bank's responsibility to monitor these type of accounts and we don't want to take losses associated with them. We allow customers to print something on their checks that says that two signatures are required but the signature card and resolution clearly state only one is required.

You know, I missed that this was two signatures on a check. I was thinking of account opening.

I agree. Those accounts are a waste of time. The bank should not take on that responsibility. If the company itself wants to do so as an internal requirement, that's fine, but the bank should make it clear it will not monitor for two signatures.

Thanks to both of you for your input.

I will pass this on, and see if we want to do away with two signatures required. If we decide to continue this practice, I think someone should be looking at these transactions. As far as I know, we don't have that many accounts set up this way, so it shouldn't be that difficult.

That's what we do.

Thanks for your advice, Juggs. I am going to take the all of the advice to the person who is in charge of opening accounts and she what she thinks. I definitely think we should rethink the two signatures required.