Is it possible to retrieve historic bank records from the 1990's?

I had zero success at CIBC trying to obtain my chequing account transaction records from the early 90"s.

Thanks jevonb, I received the same response from an informal request, however I have heard of others being successful. I am assuming that it depends on the bank

You can try. All documents get sent to Iron mountain so it may still be there. Need to ask the branch to send in a request.

Thanks bomber17, that is good to know. Will give that a try

Kanuck1835 wrote: ↑ Thanks jevonb, I received the same response from an informal request, however I have heard of others being successful. I am assuming that it depends on the bank

Depends on the bank and can depend on the type of account or record type being sought as well as, obviously, the age.

Sometimes they won't have the paperwork associated with a transaction anymore but they can provide a print-out of the transactions. This may or may not be sufficient.

FYI - check with your branch on fees! I know in the past that there were fees per item retrieved and/or fees per hour of research time required. You don't want to trigger a research effort that costs $50 per hour and may take 20 hours just to prove you paid a $100 tax bill twice! It would be a good idea to narrow down your timeline as tightly as possible.

Thanks CanadianLurker, the Bank is RBC, it is a corporate account and it was in December 1993. I have spoken with an Account Manager and he advised 7 years is the limit, which I feel may be how far they can go back at the branch level. If you are familiar with the process and can provide some guidance to a department that specializes in these requests I would be grateful.

The double tax amount is significant, so I am comfortable with running up the bill a little bit to find out. Thanks again

1990.....START OF THE WWW. Many that left HS in 91,92,93 still had to use the library to study. LOL

Kanuck1835 wrote: ↑ I am trying to prove that a tax payment was made along with my remittance voucher in the early 1990's...long story, but it appears the original payment went missing and my Accountant ending up paying it twice.

It is my understanding that banks purge financial data after 7 years. However, I have also read of instances where some banks were able to provide bank statements as far back as the 80's.

Has anyone had any success with obtaining historic documents from a bank or have knowledge of the process involved?

Really doubt it.

Last 10 years may be,

This is over 30 years ago.

In reality, banks would not save this on their tapes back that far.

Edit:
Many times, my friend ran query with empty returns on database. Time to time, police requested cell calls info for their investigation. This was 25 years ago.

Kanuck1835 wrote: ↑ I am trying to prove that a tax payment was made along with my remittance voucher in the early 1990's...long story, but it appears the original payment went missing and my Accountant ending up paying it twice.

It is my understanding that banks purge financial data after 7 years. However, I have also read of instances where some banks were able to provide bank statements as far back as the 80's.

Has anyone had any success with obtaining historic documents from a bank or have knowledge of the process involved?

Is this not past the statute of limitations? CRA can only go back 7 years from the date of the notice of assessment so not sure if you can open up something from 28 years ago. Why was the double payment not discovered years ago especially if it was a significant amount? Go luck OP, unless you have your business account records somewhere I think you are SOL.

Any how, to put things in prospective, payment must have been made by cheque or wire. In our Firm, we would probably be able to provide you a statement but we would need to go to the micro phish film archive. (Unbelievably we still have a micro phish reader, not sure if it still works though). Internet was just coming into vogue and it was dial-up. I know I didn't have internet at home until 1997.

Kanuck1835 wrote: ↑ Thanks CanadianLurker, the Bank is RBC, it is a corporate account and it was in December 1993. I have spoken with an Account Manager and he advised 7 years is the limit, which I feel may be how far they can go back at the branch level. If you are familiar with the process and can provide some guidance to a department that specializes in these requests I would be grateful.

The double tax amount is significant, so I am comfortable with running up the bill a little bit to find out. Thanks again

Sometimes they are able to recall archived data where somebody in IT pulls up an archived database and you can account entries like a statement would show. I don’t know how far back they’d support something like that though. Challenge here is ‘93 is quite a ways back and and maybe they don’t even have it at all, or it’s in a format that they can’t really support anymore, etc.

Other than running the request higher up for a better answer, I don’t have anything else that comes to mind that can help you.

IMHIP2, Agree, I am definitely out of time with CRA. This is just something I currently have time to investigate, which I didn't back then. I have some of the business account records and this is where i noticed a double payments in the same period. If I am giving full disclosure here, I am trying to establish whether it did go to CRA or rerouted.

Is your firm hired by banks to provide statements? If so, I am interested in hearing more about it.

That's Canadian Lurker, that is good advice. I will see if I can track down a contact for someone in RBC IT and see where that leads me. Cheers

this is payroll remittance, correct? if you get no where with your bank, maybe you can ask the CRA, they might keep records for that but not sure how far they go back either?

Kanuck1835 wrote: ↑ That's Canadian Lurker, that is good advice. I will see if I can track down a contact for someone in RBC IT and see where that leads me. Cheers

Don’t get your hope up, your contact in IT (strongly will not have access to or if the info still exist).

Technically I think Financial Institutions have to keep records for 7 years. In reality they probably do longer. Doubt they'll go digging around for 30 year old records (even if they did keep them).

zod wrote: ↑ Technically I think Financial Institutions have to keep records for 7 years. In reality they probably do longer. Doubt they'll go digging around for 30 year old records (even if they did keep them).

Oh they keep it a lot longer than 7 years. Not only do they need the records that originated from 7 years ago to the present, they need all the records and data prior that supports the financial calculations in any of those 7 years. That doesn't necessarily mean it is stored in its original form or electronic record.

Also, banks generally have a fee schedule to search for records that aren't available on-line, which is like an hourly rate when it requires a manual search.

Kanuck1835 wrote: ↑ IMHIP2, Agree, I am definitely out of time with CRA. This is just something I currently have time to investigate, which I didn't back then. I have some of the business account records and this is where i noticed a double payments in the same period. If I am giving full disclosure here, I am trying to establish whether it did go to CRA or rerouted.

Is your firm hired by banks to provide statements? If so, I am interested in hearing more about it.

No I work for a Brokerage firm, so I was referring specifically to our clients. I know we have records, that probably go back to the late 70's, on micro phish and sometimes, some poor admin person is asked to look an account up, but I don't think we've been asked for anything in a few years now. We stopped using micro phish back in 2011 after running it parallel with the tape backup we had converted a few years earlier.

I worked in retail banking in the 90's. We had micro-fiche going back the last 7 years of all account statements, even passbook transactions. Fiche older than 7 years were sent off to Iron Mountain and recorded on a log. Then someone in Head Office would review the logs and order Iron Mountain to destroy said boxes.

Now, while transactional detail needed to be kept for 7 years, all account opening forms had to be kept indefinitely. This includes open and closed accounts, loans and mortgages. Remember, this was the high age of paper! Every year we would have to gather up all closed account files, box and log them and send them off to Iron Mountain.

westcoastyvr wrote: ↑ I worked in retail banking in the 90's. We had micro-fiche going back the last 7 years of all account statements, even passbook transactions. Fiche older than 7 years were sent off to Iron Mountain and recorded on a log. Then someone in Head Office would review the logs and order Iron Mountain to destroy said boxes.

Now, while transactional detail needed to be kept for 7 years, all account opening forms had to be kept indefinitely. This includes open and closed accounts, loans and mortgages. Remember, this was the high age of paper! Every year we would have to gather up all closed account files, box and log them and send them off to Iron Mountain.

Just making sure i understand correctly, when they were sent to Iron Mountain, were they just recorded on a log or were the micro-fiche copied at Iron Mountain and retained?