File and document management in Kenya: – At the Filing Room, we have been managing, storing and protecting the records of this country’s banking industry for over two decades. Our understanding of records management in Kenya is second to none.

And our grasp on how records management can be best tailored to the many banks that finance this country’s businesses is informed and well-educated by years of service.

Over the last twenty five years, we have learnt what it is that banks expect of a third-party records management partner. We know every different kind of record that the industry needs stored. And we have developed the most efficient practices to aid and abet both the proper storage and the effective retrieval of these records.

As is well-known by both the banking and records management sector, Kenyan corporate law stipulates that paper records must be kept for a minimum of 7 years. (If you want to find out more about Kenyan corporate law as pertains to document storage, you can do so here)

Within the banking industry – which, each day, creates ream after ream of paper records – this means the paper trail of day-to-day operations can be huge.

Some of these records simply need to be kept safe and secure on the off chance they are needed. Others need to be accessed often and quickly each time. Still more need to be added to and updated with great frequency.

We, at the Filing Room, understand all that and we have tailored our retrieval practices to best suit each of these types of file.

Credit card files & KYC records

Credit card files tend to need to be frequently accessed. When they do need to be accessed, it is often on a file-by-file basis.

At the Filing Room, we generally offer inventorying at file level or, if greater specificity is required, we can do so at document level. We have found that banks which require frequent access to specific credit card records have benefitted hugely from our document level inventorying.

We use O’Neil’s RS-SQL Records Centre Software to ensure records are easily located, quickly retrieved and effectively replaced within their designated box. At Box level inventorying, each box is given a specific barcode. At file level, we do this for each file.

When specific credit card files are requested, we simply need its specific reference number for us to quickly locate it and send it to our client. Then, when it is returned, that unique number is used to ensure the file is placed back where it belongs. Thus, ensuring the continued and thorough organisation of all boxes kept within our warehouses.

Like credit card records, KYC (Know Your Customer) files – used to verify banking customer identities – can need to be frequently accessed. They also need to be updated and scrutinised often. Just as our software permits this for credit card records, it is a huge help in ensuring we can retrieve and relay KYC records to our clients.

Daily teller transaction records

Daily teller records are produced in such quantities that the effective storage of them can be quite cumbersome. They do not need to be accessed with as much regularity as credit card files, but their sheer volume requires effective management.

The O’Neil software serves to do just that. At a file-level inventory, this huge collection of records can be mapped easily and organised by the software.

Corporate account contracts

Corporate accounts require far less frequent access. They are not so often required but their continued security is arguably of greater concern. The best practices for the storage and treatment of corporate accounts is, therefore, based more on safety than it is ease of access.

Just as our partnership with O’Neil’s Record Centre Software ensures efficient retrieval, it is also an important mechanism in security. No file is moved without the software logging that move. As a result, we always know exactly where each of the files stored with us is as at any given time (apart from when we have returned it to our clients).

When corporate accounts are within our warehouses, they are protected from fire, theft and damage by industry-leading technology and protocols.

Our warehouses can only be accessed by authorised personnel and are protected by finger-print scanner technology. They are built to withstand flooding, equipped with dry-powder sprinklers to combat the threat of fire and they are fumigated regularly to combat insects.

We, at the Filing Room, have taken every precaution to protect Kenya’s banking records.

Destruction of records

All files reach a stage where they have outlived the necessity of their existence. In every industry, this now means the records have become a liability. Storing records beyond the date of their utility is an added and unnecessary expense.

Within the banking industry, keeping these records beyond the stage of their usefulness, can also be dangerous. Keeping records that since served their purpose adds to the potential for those records to do ill for the company keeping them.

At this point, they need to be efficiently and safely destroyed. At the Filing Room, we offer a destruction service that will give you a destruction certificate. Therefore, ensuring your peace of mind.