Our branch was held up this morning. What steps do we have to take, besides having employees fill out robbery ID forms, notifying the FBI and our regulators?

I think you hit the basic "have tos" but a few other steps come to mind:

You may want to alert your local police, as the FBI has robbery low on its priority list right now.

You may want to see if anyone else may have seen the robber(s) - prior customers, etc. - and have them fill out description forms as well.

Especially if you are in a small bank/community, you may want to alert your directors so they don't first hear it on the street.

I would also strongly recommend that you get a psychologist in to help your tellers get past this. It may not be obvious that they need it, but they probably do. Your h/r area may have this available through an employee assistance program. We found this extremely helpful after we were robbed.

Good luck to you!

Thanks for your help. I didn't think about notifying our directors.

Here are a few things:

Have you contacted your local authorities? If you caught the robber on film I would remove it to a safe place. Review all aspects of the film. I would also talk to the employees involved. Each should document the event in their own words. Also I would feel out how they are doing. Some robberies can be quite a tramatic experience. Good luck.

Make sure that you have one person designated to talk to media.

Ensure the cameras time was the same as the tellers if applicable. It is not a good thing for the media to show a picture of the wrong guy saying "the police are looking for ...".

Thanks to everyone for their help. Fortunately, the hold up was at our WalMart branch. WalMart has an amazing security system. They made a tape for the police department showing the suspect and even showing what car he got into, what direction he was going when he left. Hopefully he will be apprehended. Another plus was that when we opened the branch two years ago we installed a cash dispensing machine and lowered the teller drawer limits to almost nothing. This robber did not get away with much money but he reminded us all that we need to keep on our toes. We are a small town - it can happen anywhere.