Do you have a policy for record retention or are some of you using the record retention from BOL? How do you keep your in-house policy up to date?

Michelle III

What I do is look at the record retention guidelines for PA, Department of Banking and then I use a book called Financial Institutions Record Retention Manual, Financial Managers Society. Web site http://www.fmsinc.org

Some regulations guide you on how long to retain certain documents. So you have to look at that too.

Thanks.

We use the FMS Record retention manual as well, and we have used that for years without a complaint from the FDIC. But management wants a separate list of items and how long we need to keep them.

I hate to create a list just to create work. And I see this one coming back to bite me if it is not kept up to date.

So do you keep a separate list of how long to keep certain items or do you rely only on the FMS book?

Michelle III

Documents that are required by regulation are listed in our policy and procedures. Retention for all other documents is based on the FMS book and State retention requirements. Of course 7 years seems to be the safe timeframe for most items and somethings you just have to use common sense in making a good decision. If the tellers use a certain document and you tell them to box them up each year and they never in the last 7 years had a reason to look up the document, then 7 years is probably too long of a time frame. Storing records is always an issue for banks. Eventually you start to run out of storage space. That may be one of the reasons management wants it to be listed.