Bank signatures - not crypto

[Peter Sommer]

As Nicholas says,  this appears to be a problem in banking practice 
rather than law.

In the late 1990s most UK banks embarked on projects to examine the 
details and "best practice" of scanning print documents,  including 
cheques,  into electronic form.  The Civil Evidence Act, 1995,  meant 
that it was no longer essential for banks and others to maintain 
original hard copies - scanning has the virtues of saving space,  being 
much easier to index and hence locate stuff when required, and also the 
e-versions can be backed up.

Colleagues of mine at the LSE helped formulate what became BSI 
PD0008/0009, which are the applicable standards.  (I played a rather 
minor part).  The international, as opped to the British, version  is 
now ISO15489.

Later one of the clearing banks asked us to do some consultancy specific 
to their implementation of it.

Your bank is thus likely to have had many examples from which to obtain 
the "sample" signature they decided to compare with the one you offered.

Peter Sommer




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?
>
> My bank refused to honour a cheque on the grounds that it did not 
> match the mandated signature.
>
> With some difficulty, I got a sight of the said signature, obtained in 
> 2002 abd scanned in in 2004. The bank is unable to tell me where the 
> signature came from: it could have been from something I signed or 
> taken from a cheque.
>
> Surely there must be some regulations or at the least internal bank 
> regulations on this? Seeing I've been with the same bank since 1961 
> and the same branch since 1979, it seems a bit odd to only get a 
> signature in 2002!
>
> (and it has become more flamboyant compared to the signature they hold 
> -- so why have other, similarly large, cheques been honoured without 
> problems?)
>
> //Mary Hawking//
>
>


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