Wondering how other banks handle this: Some of our customers engage an accounting firm who is not a customer of our bank or a signer on their account. Our customers would like the accounting firm to be able to access their accounts online for "view only" access. How do you address this in your institutions? I'm thinking about giving our customers "view only" passwords, and letting them share those passwords with whomever they choose, but I'm not comfortable giving a non-customer inquiry access to a customer's accounts, even with some kind of hold harmless agreement signed by our customer. Thoughts? Ideas? Thank you.

Putting it in the hands of the customer is the only way to go. If your system allows view only and separate users that the customer can control, that is the only way I would agree to do this. Otherwise, the customer can just order duplicate statements to be sent to their accountant or make their own copies.

With our system, customers can assign anyone the ability to get into their on-line banking (setting up their username and password, etc) and can choose the authority level (view only, transfer ability, etc) so it's the customers responsibility to manage it appropriately.