The Road Home for Health Care & Medical Benefit Solutions

The Fed is making a list and checking it twice. But, financial institutions must comply with that list well before Christmas. On Jan. 1, new regulations from the Federal Reserve Board went into effect requiring all banks and financial institutions to improve efforts to combat identity theft.

These RED FLAG RULES say that all financial institutions, including banks, credit unions, mortgage lenders, and more, that store consumer accounts to develop and implement identity theft prevention programs that will help combat ID theft in connection with new and existing accounts.

Financial institutions must create reasonable policies and procedures for preventing ID theft, identify red flag signals of possible identity theft, and notify victims. With the compliance deadline Nov. 1, 2009, financial institutions have a mere 50 business days to fulfill seven requirements.