Re: [tlug] Accounting Systems and Speed of Reconciliation

[Ai Ling <alchow@example.com>]

>From "Alexei Anisimov" <alexei.anisimov@example.com>:
> I have a question - how come other banks manage to stay opened for 
> customers longer - do they really make their employees to stay late till 
> 7-8 pm (until they close the day) on a regular basis? Or do they just 
> have things set up somehow different?

I'm not sure how much of the other stuff I can address (having never been to Russia and knowing absolutely nothing of the Russian banking system), but control procedures for audit purposes takes up the bulk of the 2 hours.  

Banks that stay open until 7-8 pm are not open for transactions, as far as I'm aware.  The employees who talk to you about your investments and open accounts are not the same as the ones who post the transactions.  The sales employees don't have to do that odious EOD accounting like the ops employees do.  Notice that if you go into a bank expecting to actually transact (this wire transfer _must_ be done today!) you may find yourself politely refused.

Reason: centralized processing.  AFAIK, modern banks don't do complicated procedures/transactions within the branch anymore--they're instructed to send it to a processing center, which does the actual transactional work.  Hence, the different cut-off times branches post for different types of transactions.

I hope this helps.

Ai Ling