SAFE-DEPOSIT BOXES CONTINUE TO VANISH

Good luck getting a safe-deposit box.

Longtime deposit-box renters are getting kicked out of their boxes by banks that are shutting down or scaling back the service. Customers say they have been struggling to find the small boxes traditionally kept inside vaults to store family heirlooms and other valuables.

Kris Wall called 13 branches around the San Francisco Bay Area over the past 18 months, and visited another six or seven, in her unsuccessful search for new boxes. The 49-year-old gemologist and jeweler uses them to store her work, but was told to vacate her extra-large box at a First Republic branch last year.

A decade ago, she got on a wait list at one bank that said it expected an opening in nine years. It never called. She recently learned the bank got rid of deposit boxes completely.

"It's literally going the way of landlines," Wall said.

To some banks, the boxes are becoming more trouble than they are worth. Banks say the service is an anachronism in a time when people increasingly manage their checking accounts and investments on apps and websites.

Yet safe-deposit box customers—who tend to be affluent and middle-aged or older—see them as a bread-and-butter bank service. They stash important paper documents in them, such as the title to a house or car, as well as family heirlooms like jewelry and coin collections.

There is no official tally of boxes, and estimates vary. Jerry Pluard, co-founder of Safe Deposit Box Insurance Coverage, said there are about 20% fewer than the 40 million safe-deposit boxes that existed six years ago.

As banks get out of this business, some independent companies sense an opportunity. BlueVault operates two private vaults in California with safe-deposit boxes. It is planning to open locations in Texas and Arizona. Jon Sandhaus, who runs the company, said that about a quarter of the people who open boxes do it because their banks don't have any available. "We get calls daily: ‘They're shutting down my branch,'" he said.

To read the complete article, see:
No One Can Find Safe-Deposit Boxes Anymore (https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/savings/no-one-can-find-safe-deposit-boxes-anymore-0bfccf88)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
NON-BANK FIRMS OFFER SAFE DEPOSIT SERVICES (https://www.coinbooks.org/v22/esylum_v22n47a26.html)

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