What are you doing about Identification for the customers who wish to open an account. ID/CIP

We are being creative........ Does someone at the bank know them? Does one of our customers know them? (They may be staying with a customer.) Do they have some other form of ID? We run Decision Power and may run a credit report. This is just some of what we can do. Most of the time, these people do have ID and we run DP on all new customers. We then document for CIP that this was "Hurricane relief, evacuee or something so that we know this account was for a hurricane victim".

Didn't I hear that most banks in LA, AL, and MS are back up and running? Maybe a call to their bank to verify their account status there would help. I assume that a good portion of the 38% impoverished population of NO was unbanked. The rest of the Gulf would likely largely be banked.

You should likely require them to bring in a good photo ID within 6 weeks or two months. Tell them that if they do not bring in ID within that time period or come talk to you about why they can't, the account will be closed.

The larger banks in the city have relocated and are running form backup opertions centers in Houston, Atlanta, or Bham. Many of the community banks are working form satellite offices in Baton Rouge, and in some cases working at the Louisiana Bankers Assoc office, the Community Bankers of La office, or First National Bankers Bank. The NO headquartered banks have met twice this week with the Office of Financial Institutions (OFI) to try and open joint offices throughout Jefferson Parish, sharing teller lines and having staff from each bank running manual ledgers (ah, the good old days) to track the transactions. They initially were going to try and open 3, but may try to open as many as 15. Every NO headquartered bank is up and running somewhere...

Yes, it is stil very difficult to call into south louisisna, and 800 lines are swamped as well. Cell service is hit and miss

Thanks for all your imput it helps.

Thanks for the info. Our emergency management supervisor is setting up a meeting today to discuss displaced people being sent to us. They will really be displaced when they get here - between Kansas City and Denver and no large lakes even. They apparently will have direct deposits from FEMA so we will probably go with non-documentary "evidence".