It also will stay open late on New Year's Eve. Like First Union, Summit has been aggressive in its Y2K campaign, using full-page newspaper ads, posters and Y2K messages on ATM screens and on transaction receipts. She attributes this apparent calmness to aggressive campaigns by the Federal Reserve and other regulatory agencies to get the word out on bank safety. No matter how your payments are processed, whether it's paper money or checks or electronic funds, all the systems have potential risks or involvements with Y2K, and they ought to be checked. The four bank regulatory agencies announced this summer that 99.7 percent of institutions were considered satisfactory or better in Y2K preparations.
Regulators are now in the third round of examinations.
In the third round, regulators are concentrating on large institutions and on the few institutions that were rated unsatisfactory. Results for individual banks are not made public. However, if the government takes disciplinary action, that will be public. Taylor said that in addition to looking at whether computers and software are fixed, regulators look at whether banks have checked electronic equipment for potential Y2K problems. They also monitor whether banks have adequate cash reserves and whether they have checked on the Y2K status of major depositors and borrowers.