I have recently audited the safe deposit box area of a community bank and have discovered for the first time in my career that surrendered keys are being used again for the box it was previously assigned to. The keys are then placed in a pouch that is not rivitted to detect tampering or opening, but contains a snap to keep the flap shut.
My experience at other institutions has been to rekey the lock or switch out the locks. Management claims that they key cannot be duplicated other than by Diebold. I don't buy that explaination. I've also explained to managment the potential for "unlimited" liability that this area can pose. Please advise.

Thanks.

I am not sure if this will help you at all, but we are a community bank in Central Wisconsin and all of our safety deposit boxes are reassigned with the same keys. We do not get our locks rekeyed at all. We have a company that specifically makes our keys for us and they do say do not duplicate. I guess there could be some person(s) out there that would not obey that warning and make a duplicate anyway, I'm not even sure if that is possible for them to rekey these, if it needs special equipment or not. But I guess that our policy and the two banks I worked at previously also reassigned the same keys.

I hope that this helps in your search.

I would think that the lock would need to be changed only if both keys were not turned in. That's always the way we handled it. It would get very expensive to change locks ever time a box was reissued. Any keys to unissued boxes need to be locked away and audited.

If the institution has a secure location for safe deposit boxes; the box requires two keys for opening (one of the customers, one of the banks); and requires that the person sign an entry card, etc.; why would it be necessary to switch the locks?

I can describe a scenario putting you at risk if you want to send me a PM with a bank e-mail address. I don't want to put it in a public forum.

Wow! This has to be one of those " I've never seen a problem so lets ignore security and save a buck things.

I posted a senerio and after reading Al's post deleted it as he is correct in his comment about not posting it here.

If you want another one PM me also

Read any safe deposit procedure book or attend any safe deposit box training event and you'll be enlightened. If you don't change the locks, the exposure is there. I would bet that if you aren't changing locks, there are some other best practices that you're not following; therefore, I would highly recommend getting some guidance and training.

The bet you are placing is that you will never be sued...and this can be a very high stakes bet...

I just attended a webinar presented by Dave McGuinn yesterday and he really opened our institutions eyes! I would definately find myself a seminar or webinar if I was in your shoes.

I could also describe a situation that resulted from locks not being changed. We always change all locks even with both keys returned. The cost is a small price to pay for the "insurance" we get from doing it.