Just discovered that some of our employees are using their personal cell phones to either text or call a bank customer about an NSF check or loan payment due; etc. I am in the process of writing a mobile device policy, and I disagree with using a personal device for bank contact with customers. Thoughts?

why are they using personal cell phones, is contact not being made from a bank office? do they use personal cell phones for other bank business? do customers contact them on these same personal cell phones? while a good number of our employees have bank provided phones, a greater number do not, and many in the 2nd category use their personal cell for business, it is included on their business card, they use for bank email, certainly used to contact and be contacted by customers.

what is your issue with allowing them to use a personal cell to contact a customer?

I will take the other side from Happy. I don't think employees should be conducting business from their personal devices. You have to think about security issues and what happens then this employee leaves (ie. quits or is terminated). For us if you have a bank issued phone, the bank owns the device and the number. If the employee leaves for what ever the reason, the bank has control of the item. I am sure we have employees conducting business from personal devices which we can't control.

It's also a potential safety issue to give customers employees' personal numbers.

As osupa indicated above, referring to departing staff, there is a privacy issue as well. The personal phone would potentially have a bank of NPI phone numbers stored.

phone numbers are publicly available

Lets assume Bill calls me on his personal cell about my numerous NSFs and past due loan payment. "This can't be" I say, "I know I have lots of money in the bank. I will look into it and call you back." Which I do.

Bill is a friendly type and we strike up a bit of a conversation and I believe Bill is my new friendly banker. When I call him, this time or 6 months from now because I saved his number, I mention to him I lost my debit card and someone took $50 from my account. Actually, I left him a voice mail. I didn't know Bill was fired from the bank nor that he had zero interest in helping the bank or me.

As it happens $3000 was taken from my account after I made that call. But, did I notify "the bank?" "The bank" conducted official business with me this way before? Can you defend a "No" answer based on Reg E's OSC:

"A financial institution is considered to have received notice for purposes of limiting the consumer's liability if notice is given in a reasonable manner, even if the consumer notifies the institution but uses an address or telephone number other than the one specified by the institution."

Employees will tend to use their phones for business, but texting one's boss with a question or a request for a day off is not calling customers about official business. There is risk here and the chance that customers not seeing the bank on caller ID will then have to verify who called and why because that number isn't even close to the banks.

Another hypothetical, Bill wants a form from me. I scan it and send it with my phone, to Bills. The bank and I are later involved in a federal court case and the rules of evidence require e-records to be submitted into evidence. The problem is, nobody other than Bill knew the bank had that record and it was a key item.

Along the lines as above. A friend of mine's husband was terminated from his job and they hired a labor lawyer. The first thing they were asked was how many times did you conduct business for your employer on your personal phone. As it turned out many times. The labor lawyer went after the employer and stated if they did not change the way the separation was written she was going to sue for all of the back expenses associated with the employees personal phone. They agreed very quickly.

I do not have a Bank issued phone nor will I ever take one. Sometimes you just have to disconnect.

I don't believe cell numbers are publically available

Text messages can be saved to the phone by taking screen shots.

I also think it would be confusing for customers. I would be suspicious of anyone that called me and said they were from XYZ bank and I could not associate their phone number with published numbers for the bank.