I just found and read the memo dated 1/25/05 and am completely confused as to what we're suppposed to be doing come Tuesday. I guess my best bet is to call them, I have no idea who our rep. is.

Thank you Rie A. The material was very helpful in determining WHY the change was made. Also, it assured me that I'm correctly understanding the liability from the bank's (guarantor's) perspective.

Quote:

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I was just reading on the Securities Transfer Association's website and found this:

http://www.stai.org/paperless.php

It states the following:

"Furthermore, STAMP, Inc. is aware of a landmark case involving inappropriate documents contained in a “legal transaction”. The Transfer Agent clearly erred in its examination and acceptance of supporting documents and a wrongful transaction resulted. Regardless, a claim against the Guarantor was made. After review and discussion with its Surety Company, the Guarantor acknowledged its responsibility and paid the claim, in full. This case did not involve a legal judgement and does not constitute precedence. However, it is a clear indication of the effectiveness of Section 8-306 of the Code and Medallion Guarantee Program Documents."

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We are having legal counsel review and will then make a decision as to whether we will continue to guarantee signatures. It appears we all took this too lightly in the past!

We, too, are looking into this further. For now we won't be doing any guarantees for anything relative to an estate or even a trust. But does anyone see a problem with guaranteeing a signature for a known customer who just wants to sell or transfer some stock? This seems straight forward to us, without much liability, as long as we know the customer. What does everyone else think?

So often it isn't that simple. Invariably there is some long story they want to tell you about the security and invariably one of the owners needs to be removed from the titling.
I'm concerned we won't be able to train our officers the subtleties of each situation they will face with these transactions.

I'd love for someone who has spoken to their counsel to post what their attorney had to say. We too, as of today, have suspended the program until we can figure out what is going on. Big thanks to the original anon who started this thread and got us all thinking.

We've not suspended, yet - but our Compliance/Operations Chief is getting noivous!!!!!

Pizzaz,

Original anon. here. Thank you for the compliment about starting this valuable thread regarding signature guarantees (I have also been most of the anon. posts within the thread too)
As I glance at the BOL General Discussion board this Monday morning I can help but notice 3 threads where there have been a Large amount of responses (this thread alone has had 32 responses, "Compliance Officer-omly one person"- 14 responses and "Further Education"- 25 responses). No other threads on the first page are even close in terms of number of responses. ALL three threads were started by an anonomyous BOLers.
Too often anons are ripped on (some of the digs coming from gurus) for posting anonomyously. There is a very clear reason, at least for me, as to why I am choosing to post this way. As we can see this morning anons are adding value to this forum, regardless of how we choose to post.

Thanks again.

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I'd love for someone who has spoken to their counsel to post what their attorney had to say. We too, as of today, have suspended the program until we can figure out what is going on. Big thanks to the original anon who started this thread and got us all thinking.

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Any list of states for the Inheritance Tax Waiver?

Not that I've seen, they said it would be out by 7/5/05. I'm going to check the STAMP and KeMark sites.

Here is one I found. I don't know how accurate or up-to-date it is.

I found this one at ABA they did a really nice job.

Thanks!

Ok let's continue to beat this horse to death. Even after reading this scary thread, our bank decided to continue to offer signature guarantees. We believe it is an important service that some of our best customers need. To eliminate it we wonder where else they would go....plus we do have a Investment Reg in our lobby (dual-employee type). Her customers need signature guarantees on a fairly regular basis.
But we have decided to intensively train about 5-7 officers to signature guarantee. Does anyone know where we could get a checklist of what paperwork is needed for various types of transfers, name changes, etc. In the past we would notice our customers had some type of checklist from the transfer agent requesting certain documents (i.e., personal rep. papers, etc.) before they would complete the transaction. I'm not sure where to start to get the checklist because it is unlikely the transfer agents would be willing to give theirs up since they are now out of the "checking documents" business and also if they shared their checklists they would be considered giving us legal advice.

Thanks for any respones to this very, long, but valuable thread.

I haven't seen a checklist but if you take a look at the rules of the Securities Transfer Association here it does provide pretty good information about what is required for signature guarantees. Specifically, look at Appendix 1. You could probably create a pretty simple checklist from this information.

Also, take a look at Section 8-102 of the UCC which discusses signature guarantees.

I received a communication from the STAMP program yesterday they are having a training session September 15th in Philadelphia, the agenda includes information on the warrantees made and the liabilities incurred by the Guarantor each time a Medallion Stamp is used. The presentation also contains a overview of all STAMP Program documents, suggested administrative procedures, etc. There will be a handbook and a video, however the material and video can only be obtained by attending the workshop.

There's one in Hartford CT. too in October but that doesn't really help us in the interim. We too have made the decision to continue to offer but like anon said, we'll only have 4 officers allowed to provide a guarantee. I'm on the lookout for additional training besides those sessions put on by STAMP, it's too far out. If anyone finds anything, please let me know. Thanks.

Hi,
Sorry I'm posting as an anon, but this is interesting to me. I work for BofA in a banking center. I made a call yesterday to our help line and the gal I talked to hadn't heard anything about this. At my suggestion, she checked with legal, they told her they didn't know about this either. Weird!
DM

Original Anon. here.

The BofA comment was interesting. Our community bank just assumed that large banks would have training and everything else in place already. We also thought they would not offer the service at every branch and require people to go to the larger bank offices to see officers that had been more intensely trained on how to know what documents were needed to effect the transaction.

In a week or two we were going to call the local, huge bank (think: stagecoach, even though we are in farm country) and pretend like we are customers seeking a signature guarantee. We would explain that Aunt Bessie (one of the the stock's co-owner) died and Uncle Henry (the other co-owner) died 10 years ago. In their will they left the stock the my brother and me. Then ask them, "What paperwork do I need to delete their names and add our names to the stock?" and then wait to hear the answer.........
It should be good entertainment.......

Does anyone know if we can charge for a sig. guar.? If so, do you charge and how much. We'd like to begin charging due to the additional expense, risk, etc of offering them.

The only thing I've found regarding fees is a statement on the SEC website in a discussion regarding signature guarantees that says that guarantors may charge a fee for the service, but that most don't.

Thanks Rubaiyat, I'm guessing that many will rethink that and begin to charge given the increased risk.

While on the subject of the Medallion stamp, I have some questions as well. I am looking for some written procedures that another bank might have. Also, do you only allow a bank officer to have authority to use the stamp.

D T - this won't really help you but I'll comment. I don't currently have access to the policy and procedures I wrote regarding our Medallion program to give you specifics (you're unregistered - I couldn't PM you anyway), but our policy was centered around the guidelines provided to us directly by Kemark Financial Services in their enrollment package - then we just added anything specific for our bank. Yes - we had written procedures, and yes - only officers were given authority to use the stamp.