Banks likely to shift vaults out of basements

Important documents stored in several safe deposit vaults of bank were submerged in flood waters following last week's heavy downpour. This has prompted banks to reconsider establishment of vaults at basements.

"We need to reevaluate location of safe deposit vaults in basements," said M V Nair, chairman of Dena Bank.

An official with another public sector bank said "the vaults are supposed to be the safest places for storing valuables, including documents. We cannot afford to put locker-holders' belongings at risk for whatever reason." The best option would be to shift vaults out of the basements, the official said.

Four vaults of Dena Bank, two of State Bank of India (SBI) and several more of a few other banks were affected by flood waters, all of them in the suburbs.

Dena Bank issued advertisements urging its locker holders to visit the branches and check their valuables and documents and kept the affected vaults open till late evening last Saturday and also on Sunday.

Nair said structural aspects of safe deposit vaults now need to be looked into, to ensure that the place is also water-proof.

The basement at Dena Bank's new headquarters at the Bandra-Kurla complex too was flooded. Luckily, the bank had shifted only a small part of its old records to the basement.

Flooding of Bank of India's (BoI) branch at its headquarters next to the Dena Bank head office cut it off from the core banking system.

BoI was allowing cash withdrawals through cheques at the branch and then sending the instrument to a nearby branch connected to the core banking solution for making entries.