How long do most banks keep signature cards after they have sucessfully been imaged?

At my bank, the branch of account keeps the original signature card at the branch until the account is closed. Then the card would be filed with the same year's closed accounts and placed in our storage facility. I believe they are maintained for as long as 7 years after the account has been closed.

Duke

Unless your state law requires otherwise, there is no need to retain the paper signature card once you've verified that it has actually been imaged. We've just begun imaging our signature cards and I'm having a hard time convincing our branch staff to let go of the paper. They keep EVERYTHING! some of their signature card files resemble a loan file, they are so fat with revised or changed cards! Keeping all of this paper rather defeats the purpose of imaging. However, you might need it if the power went out or the imaged documents couldn't be accessed for some reason. How do others out there handle that issue - making sure the sig card is available if the on-line version can't be accessed?

waldensouth ... old habits are hard to break ...

We scan our audit workpapers and then destroy the paper copies. We have a person that "reconciles" the page-count before the scan to the number of pages that were actually scanned. If everything checks-out ... then the paper is destroyed. It's a tedious process ... but it's our "quality control" system right now. Besides ... we save money by reducing storage costs ... and the scanned information is now at our fingertips by calling-up the file from our computer (vs. running down the paper file).

We received a legal opinion when we started imaging that anything that is considered a "contract" should be kept.

Since a Sig card is a contract we are imaging them, then sending them to offsite storage. It is a pain because our state law requires an 11 year retention period after closure so we really have to have a good process in place to be able to find an individual sig card from retention to destroy it when the retention period expires.

I am not a legal expert ... so I probably should not respond to Rubaiyat's post ... but imaged copies of checks are the legal equivalent of the original checks ... and that's a contract ... right? And banks accept facsimile versions of various signed agreements and contracts (e.g., wire transfer orders) on occasion ... right? The legal opinion may very-well be appropriate ... but it just seems that the "paper trail" for the financial services industry is migrating from paper to digital formats.

We have been scanning signature cards since 1997 and I don't think we have ever gotten rid of the originals. Part of the problem I believe is that we have no process in place to make sure we have good images of the signature cards. All the originals are kept in a central location, but I believe some, if not all, of our branches keep copies of signature cards (old habits are very hard to break), even though they all have access to the scanned images. Our other issue is that we have no process to monitor when the accounts are closed (at the central location) so that the cards can be pulled and marked for future destruction. Hence, everything is retained forever. . . .

I have not heard of a required retention time after the card has been scanned, but could make a case for still keeping the originals. Just as law enforcement doesn't always like photocopies of checks because there are details that can't be verified by a handwriting expert from a photocopy, the same would be true of a signature card.

We are about to implement a new "electronic" way to open an account using a signature pad. The customer would sign the signature pad instead of an actual paper signature card. The electronic signature is stored on our system for as long as we choose to keep it.

My point is. . .we about to not even have physical signature cards anymore.

Just something to think about. . .

That sounds awesome! If the merchants can do it when you swipe a card, why not a paperless signature card? I notice a lot of doctor's offices are going paperless too.

We've been scanning signature cards since 2002. The originals are kept for 60 days before destroyed.

We're gearing up to have branches do direct archiving of the new account documents -- customers would execute the doucment by use of a signature pad device that transfers the signature image to the electronic document and then it is directly archived (scanned).

Let me say that although we've been scanning sig card for years, there have certainly been times when those of us in fraud detection have been glad to see the original card. Some of the cards just did not image crisply enough to be sure of an iffy signature on a check, and sometimes we've found ones that either did not get imaged at all or were deleted in error. Our quality controls are clearly not enough to prevent these errors 100%. So far, the powers-that-be have apparently found it cheaper to keep a bunch of file cabinets hanging around than to pay someone to verify all images before destroying cards.

(That doesn't necessarily mean it IS cheaper, just that the powers-that-be have found it to be.)

This thread has been so much help to me. We are looking at scanning everything from BSA forms to sign cards. I have been thinking a lot about retention. I now at least know what to consider before making a final decision.