Scenario:
Susie Jones has an account with us. Her husband (who is not on the account) comes in and makes a deposit into the account. He had the account number with him when he came in. The teller processed the deposit but refused to give him a receipt since it has the account number on it and he wasn't on the account. The husband was very upset and wants an explanation. What regulatory cite can I give?

Did the receipt have the balance on it, too?

No, it would not have the balance.

It's called privacy - we (financial institutions) do not release non-public information about our customers. An account number is non-public - I can certainly empathize with the customer that this seems 'stupid, etc' - but in a litigious society such as ours, we have to err on the side of caution.
That's why our bank has now gone to printing only the last 4 digits of an account number on our receipts - now we don't have to worry about customer's losing them, etc.
Of course, our older customers think this is just stupid...
Ya just can't win sometimes.

I know it's privacy--but reg P states that we can not disclose non-public info to non-affiliated parties (unless we give prior notice, give right to opt out, etc). Of course the husband will argue that he is affiliated with one of the parties. I was looking for a concrete cite.

When non-affiliated is mentioned it means not affiliated with the bank, not the customer.

You clearly understand that Reg P does not prohibit the disclosure, all it requires is that you hand the customer a piece of paper saying what you will disclose. Beyond that, there is no federal law or regulation that says you cannot hand someone acting on behalf of a customer a receipt for a deposit with or without an account number.

This is simply your institution's policy and that's all you have to back up the decision. I don't know how things were explained to the teller, but if it was, "We do not give receipts to third parties who make deposits for our customer," then the teller needs to be supported in the decision.

Generally, I have to work really hard to put aside 30 years in banking so I can put myself in the customer's shoes. This time it's not so difficult. He came in with the account number; I don't see how you would have been disclosing anything.

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I was looking for a concrete cite

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As with many regulations, the definitions hold the key. Reg. P Section 216.3(m)(1) says "Nonaffiliated third party means any person except -- (i) your affiliate; or (ii) a person employed jointly by you and any company that is not your affiliate." "You" is defined to mean (basically) the bank. 216.10 says that unless an exception applies, "you" can't disclose any nonpublic personal information to a third party that is not affiliated with the bank. In other words, it doesn't matter whether the husband is an "affiliate" of the wife; you can't disclose nonpublic personal information about the wife to him unless an exception applies, because he's not an affiliate of the bank.

You could argue that the exception in Section 214 for processing a transaction at the member's request applies. But I'd rather take the safe road. (What if husband just found the wife's previously secret account number and wants to figure out how much is in the account in preparation for their divorce? Wife won't be too happy with the bank for giving him the receipt showing the balance.)

Why not just provide a receipt that has only the deposit amount, date, and last 4 digits of account number? (At some institutions, tellers are trained to mark out the rest of the information with a magic marker!) That way, husband gets a receipt to show for the deposit, but no information goes out about wife's account?

In that aspect I agree with Ken, we all do the same think with business customers all the time right?
Genereally it's a driver, courier, etc that brings in the deposits. That's why I think that the option to only print part of the account number is so great - our liability drops quite a bit.

As a teller if a customer comes in with a deposit for someone else and I hand them the receipt I only make sure that the balance for the account is not on the receipt. The husband has the account number already. Now if my customer comes in with the money or check and he doesnt have a ticket with him and says I want to deposit this to my wifes account then I would either mail the receipt to the customer or black out the account number on the receipt. Before anyone says anything yes 90% of our customers have NO tickets when they come in and we have to look up their numbers for them.

There are some really good points here about the risks of giving receipts which might include balance information and account numbers to third parties. Truncating the account number on receipts is an excellent idea for this and other reasons.

However, the original poster wasn't looking for prospective advice and that post says:

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He had the account number with him when he came in.

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Accordingly, giving him a receipt that contained that same account number would not have been a disclosure. Reg P doesn't play a role here.

As TB's post indicates, it is actually possible for the bank to depart from a general policy in a fact situation where the original impetus for the policy clearly does not exist. I'm not suggesting the teller should have handled it differently, only that now the only possible "fix" is that somebody needs to step up the plate and tell the customer, "You're right. Our teller correctly applied our policy, but in your situation our policy was silly. We apologize."

Based on lots of experience, an admission of fallibility does not leave a scar.