I was wondering how other banks handle identifying customers over the phone. We have a very busy phone center and while they do a great job, it has always concerned me. Right now they use pretty standard proceedures such as asking for a social security number, amount of the last deposit made, date of birth, ect. I know that there is no way to be absolutely sure that the person your talking to is actually the account holder, but I would like to reduce our risk.

Some call centers have customers establish PIN numbers or security codes. You link it to the customer record and when they dial in, you can pull up the code for verification. Some systems also allow the code to be programmed into the customer's dial-in routine where a recording would ask for it's input much like an account number.