The bank currently does e-statements for checking and savings. We are looking into E-bills for loans but IT believes our system can not tell the difference between the 2 so if a customer signs up for e-statements, they will automatically get e-bills even if they do no want to. I can not find a regulation that says the customer must be able to choose which accounts they would like to receive electronic statements on.

Does anyone know of a regulation that specifically states the customer has to be able to chose?

I have read the E-sign act and can not find it in there but maybe I missing it.

What they agree to receive has to be specifically outlined in your E-Sign agreement.

Be careful not to try to oversimplify this. ESIGN won't be the answer to questions about loans, deposits, bills, or statements. For these topics, you look to the familiar banking regs: B, Z, RESPA, E, DD, etc. Here, you will find the federal do's, dont's, and disclosure requirements. If you find no answers in these regs, the questions could be contractual & you'd need to discuss them with bank counsel.

ESIGN becomes a tangential issue when you find in one of the banking regs a requirement that a notice, disclosure, or periodic disclosure (a significant part of most account statements) must be provided "in writing." Paper has always satisfied these requirements, but it took the ESIGN Act to make e-documents the legal equivalent of paper. For consumer documents, legal equivalence is conditioned on "informed demonstrable consent." Part of the pre-consent information you must provide is an explanation of the scope of the consent--you can only e-deliver what you have the customer's consent to e-deliver.

We are looking to just have E-statements for Deposit and loan accounts. No electronic disclosures, yet.
If we were to:
specifically outline that when they accept they will receive all statements for deposit accounts and loans through the e-statement system
And
that the only way to separate would be to contact our internet banking department to specify which accounts they would like to still receive paper statements on.

Would this be in violation of any regulation?

If your deposit account statements don't include Reg. E and DD periodic disclosures, how will they be provided? Ditto for credit cards, HELOCs, and maybe the disclosures required by Section 1026.41 for residential mortgage loans. ???

Well of course we will have the required disclosures on our statements. Not having those disclosures is a no-no. I meant we are not providing anything other than what is required on the actual statements. We will not be providing the annual Privacy Disclosure, any updates to product disclosures, etc, through the mail. There will be a copy available online to view but all customers will receive those items through the mail as well. We will just be providing statements online.

The point I'm making is that the regs (E, DD, Z) that require these disclosures say (in most cases) that they must be delivered "in writing." That means paper or ESIGN.

You advised that you are offering statements (and the embedded disclosures--E, DD, Z) electronically. When you go tree-free, you and the customer must go through ESIGN's "informed demonstrable consent" process. Section 7001(c)(1)(B)(ii) says that you must

"inform...the consumer of whether the consent applies
(I) only to the particular transaction which gave rise to the obligation to provide the record, or
(II) to identified categories of records that may be provided or made available during the course of the parties’ relationship"

"Categories of records" include all the various documents you want to edeliver--recurring periodic statements for multiple types of accounts, e-bills, notices, one-off disclosures...and anything else you want to switch from paper to electrons. Some of these documents must comply with federal regs and others are not subject to regulation, but you must at least mention the e-deliverable items that are subject to a federal reg's "must deliver in written form" rule.

Yes that I know since I read the E-Sign act. I wanted to know if it(the fact the customers must be able to chose which account to receive e-statements instead receiving e-statements on all accounts) was specifically stated in another regulation but apparently it is not. Thank you.

You can't force consumers to take e-documents. You offer them via the ESIGN pre-consent disclosures. If the customer doesn't want some or all of what you want to bundle s/he simply refuses to consent to the whole bundle. Should you be able to offer item by item choice, then the customer would be able to consent selectively and receive the remaining items on paper.

I don't think anyone has answered the specific question you are asking. If I read your questions correctly, you are asking if a customer (who we assume has requested eStatements and have provided demonstrable consent) must be allowed to pick WHICH accounts (DDA or Loan) they want eStatements for (i.e. customer could still want paper statement on loan but want eStatement on DDA), or if you can offer it as an "all or nothing" situation. Correct?

You can offer to e-deliver any bundle of documents on an all or nothing basis. The customer would have the choice to consent to all or none.

No laws or regulations say you must offer a la carte statement delivery options. They only say you must provide certain periodic (and "one-off") disclosures "in writing." "Written" includes paper and also ESIGN-enabled electronic documents. You can choose paper and force the customer to accept it, but it doesn't work that way for e-delivery. In order to e-deliver "written" documents, you must be willing to offer this service and each customer must consent to its use (as a substitute for paper.)