Here's a shocking secret:  Many of the check-related losses suffered by financial institutions are not due to decisions made by a teller, but are instead traceable to directives from management or a loan officer.  Problems also arise when someone in the bank who hasn't had a recent fresher on the law of checks makes a legally unsupportable statement or decision.    The law on checks should be well understood by every banker so that statements made to customers and actions taken are appropriate.  In this fast-paced program, Mary Beth Guard lays out the complex rights, responsibilities, and proper courses of action for all parties to check transactions.

In this program, we will cover -

• Why you never want to stop payment on a cashier's check
• 5 dangerous deposit moves
• The minimum requirements of a check
• How to determine the amount for which a check is properly payable
• Who needs to endorse various types of checks and how they should do it
• Tips for spotting alterations and counterfeits
• When a change to a check is not an alteration
• What the different forms of endorsement are (blank, special, restrictive, anomalous), what they mean, and which should be used when
• How to identify the proper payee of a check
• How to tell if a check with multiple payees is payable jointly, or payable alternativel
• The real scoop on old checks and how to talk to customers about them
• What customers don't understand about stop payments
• How a postdated check should be handled
• How stop payments work
• What the options are when something happens to a cashier's check or teller's check
• Why special precautions should be taken when cashing checks for noncustomer payees
• Deposits to closed accounts - No,No,No
• Who is a "fiduciary," when you would be on notice of a breach of fiduciary duty, and why it matters.
• What to watch out for in a split deposit transaction
• Things to watch out for with powers of attorney, including special rules for U.S. Treasury checks
• Special handling suggestions for official bank checks
• When it's appropriate for checks to be payable to your institution, and when it's not
• Whether it's ever a good idea to cash checks payable to businesses
• The challenges involved in accepting third-party checks
• How to identify foreign checks and what to do about them