I'm looking for some guidance on how CD accounts are handled if you find that you are missing documentation when a new account is opened or if you are missing withdrawal documentation for IRAs? Do you place a hold on the account? Do you close it out after 'x' amount of days? Currently, my institution reaches out to the banker to get this corrected. After 30 days and if nothing has been received, we place a hold on the funds. I'm new to this world of operations and I'm wondering why we cannot just close it out? [b]I understand IRAs are handled differently[/b], but I see no reason why a CD cannot be handled in this manner? From a New Transaction Accounts perspective, if we're missing documentation that the customer hasn't gotten back to us, we close the account. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

A CD is one thing, but why would you open an IRA without everything being reviewed and approved? Closing an IRA has serious tax consequences for the customer and likely violates your fiduciary duties as a custodian. Sounds like you have lazy bankers and those are the people you need to get rid of and not your customers.

What do you mean by missing withdrawal documentation? Are you saying you don't have signed requests for the withdrawal and the customer has already received the funds? I'd be escalating to the branch manager to start making those calls to get that customer in - they don't have much incentive to come in if they already got what they want.

For new non-IRA CDs, placing a hold on the funds isn't going to do much. That customer isn't going to care until they come in to redeem or change the term. At that point, you could have gone through an exam cycle or two of that coming up. I'm going to bump up on contacting the customer to get the missing information - let tellers know to keep an eye out as well and have some consequences for the bankers if they don't get the information. It doesn't sound like they respond well to the "please get this info as soon as you can" (what I'd call the "carrot" incentive) so it might be time to go to tracking this type of error and reflecting it in commissions - if you do those - or reviews (the "stick" incentive). I had one specific banker who simply refused to collect appropriate data - she'd been around a long time and there were multiple meetings about it. As the branch manager, I finally started placing calls. Ironically enough, most people were very responsive. I don't think, though, that closing out the CD is appropriate. This isn't the customer's fault (unless there is documentation that the committed to bring in documentation and they have not done so).