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This September 15 INFORMATIONWEEK story indicates that small U.S. banks lag behind large ones. This is not comforting; no large bank is compliant -- not in the U.S., not in Japan, not anywhere.
The California White Paper estimates that the awareness phase is 1% of the task, inventory is 1%, and assessment is 5%. Only 20% of the banks are into assessment.
The banking system is a system. To think that it will survive if small banks' computers are spewing out bad data into large banks' computers is naive. Either the system must lock out all noncompliant banks -- goodbye system -- or else the entire system will be corrupted.
There is no way out. The banks are going down, either from y2k or from the runs that will preceded its arrival.
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Federal regulators had set a Sept. 30 goal for banks to complete assessments of their year 2000 problems. But of 153 banks surveyed during an ABA teleconference last week, 17% said they were still raising awareness of the problem-the initial, pre-assessment stage of a year 2000 effort. That "implies a significant portion are behind the curve, and that is of great concern to us," says Howard Amer, assistant director of the division of banking supervision and regulation at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Another 63% categorized themselves in the assessment stage. Only 20% have started implementation
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