In the event we hold a member's deposit periodic statements, I understand the necessity of a Statement Hold Agreement that outlines the member's responsibility to retrieve and review statements within x period of time from when we make the it available, but I am seeing a lot of "best practices" that involve tracking when the member picks up the statement. What is the purpose of this?

I can not tell you about a Statement Hold Agreement, especially with internet banking. The purpose of tracking statement pick up, is to identify when the customer picked up the statement. A number of institutions, will shred "hold" statements if not picked up in a specific period of time. Internal fraud could occur, if an employee knows a customer is not reviewing their bank statement.

Some banks have the customer sign for the statement to reduce the risk of delivering statements into the wrong hands.

One thought on documenting when the customer picked up a statement: Some regulations (Reg E comes to mind) specifically say that delivery of the statement is counted from the date it's made available to the customer, not when the customer finally gets it (if ever). I'd suggest that any statement hold agreement emphasize that for all purposes, the bank is deemed to have delivered the statement when it's been made available for pickup.