Bank signatures - not crypto

[Peter Tomlinson]

Nicholas Bohm wrote:
>  On 22/08/2010 08:33, Mary Hawking wrote:
>   
>> Sorry to ask this here, but can anyone tell me how banks are supposed
>> to acquire specimen signatures for cheques or point me to any relevant
>> URLs?
>>     
> I think this is a matter of banking practice rather than law, and I
> doubt whether it is touched by regulations (except perhaps tangentially
> by anti-money-laundering rules about "identifying" customers).
Recently I found out that my signature for my business account can now 
be brought up on the screen of a bank terminal, so it would have been 
scanned (probably quite recently) from my account application a good few 
years back (not as far back as my personal account opening, which was in 
1962). My signature has deteriorated since then... I found out because I 
tried to contact the bank on their national contact number phone 
service, but could not because I don't have a permanent magic number for 
that account and the national phone line refused to let me speak to a 
real person unless I keyed in that number (yet I happily use their 
on-line service because they gave me a widget that generates a number, 
different every time, for me to enter). So I wrote them a letter which 
they rejected because my signature didn't match... By persisting at the 
branch where my account is held, I actually got to meet a real banking 
person and then to see my signature on the screen. My uncle will be 
turning in his grave - for many years (all his working life after he was 
demobbed in 47 as still a young man) he worked for that bank under its 
previous name.

Peter