We're a small bank (less than 60 employees) so internal controls are sometimes a nightmare. I'm wondering how other institutions handle account maintenance (e.g. changing account information within system to change customer contact info or to fix errors in fields loaded incorrectly, etc).

As in "handle" I mean who approves the changes, who makes the changes and who checks the appropriateness and accuracy of the changes.

Thanks in advance.

Our changes are made (we're $460 Million with 135 employees) at the retail level. Verification is done in Deposit Operations. The retail offices must forward their documentation down for review.

We are an even smaller bank (less than 20 employees). Our customer service rep. receives change request from the customer, completes the "File change maintenance" form, and performs the input on our system. An Officer verifies the changes with the audit log (printout of changes) to the File change maintenance" form; another officer signs off if the maintenance is on a dormant account.

We have dual control. Retail and/or operations makes changes; then we have one person who does not have maintenance access who reviews all changes for accuracy and to ensure we don't have employees changing employee accounts, etc.

We are 77 employees and do the same as Skittles institution.

I worked for a bank with less than 60 employees and 4 branches. Account maintenance on the deposit side was made at the branch level, a person other than the one who made the changes would verify the information. VP of Operations would skim maintenance logs and perform random audits to make sure dual control was working properly.

On the Loan Side, a maintenance form was completed at the branch level and sent to the Loan Ops for actual changing. The VP of Lending would then verify the information.

It can be challenging, if not down right frightening, in a smaller environment.

Thanks for the replies. Our biggest problem is finding an employee that is capable of ascertaining the appropriateness of each change. It's easy to monitor the accuracy of the request vs. the actual change that was made, but determining whether or not the change should have been made in the first place is a bit more of a challenge.

Our process is similar to ones mentioned above. Change requests (approved by an officer) are funnelled to one person at each branch who makes the change. Then the forms are sent to an amployee at the main office who verifies that the Maintenance Audit log from the computer system reconciles to the change forms supplied. If changes were made without a supplied change form, the employee then contacts the branch to locate the change request form. But doing all of this while at the same time reasoning the appropriateness of changes is a daunting task and takes an employee with a very broad knowledge base covering all aspects of the bank.

My only other alternative idea (which takes the responsibility of monitoring changes down to the branch level but is still far from ideal) is for each branch to take their portion of the Maintenance Audit log from changes made the previous day and have an officer or other capable employee "retro-approve" the changes and check for accuracy against the request forms.

Anyway, thanks again for the replies.

Are you getting customer signatures are your change forms, or requiring the customer to submit their request in writing?

For internal changes that are not initiated by the customer, we require an appropriate officer's approval on the form. So we would not have an officer from lending approving an interest rate change for a CD, for example. Our verifier does not maintenance access, only inquiry. The decision as to whether or not a change is appropriate is left to the approving officer and they are held responsible for their approvals.