U.S. Treasury Urges Flexibility in Cashing Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Checks:

In response to Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. Department of the Treasury encourages depository institutions to ease their customary identification requirements for presenting Treasury checks for Social Security benefit payments. Many Social Security and SSI recipients impacted by the storm may be without traditional forms of identification such as a driver's license or other government issued identification.

Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the Treasury encourages depository institutions to seek other verification methods for affected customers. Depository institutions are especially encouraged to call the Social Security Administration's national toll-free number (1-800-772-1213) with the customer on the line. Depository institutions that follow this procedure under these extraordinary circumstances will be granted flexibility in the event of a check forgery reclamation action.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has a process in place which it uses to verify the identity of individuals by telephone. Depository institutions can use this process to verify the identity of beneficiaries/customers by allowing the customer/beneficiary to be identified by phone (with SSA) using this process. The SSA representative can ask the individual to provide necessary identifying information which the SSA representative can use to compare to information contained in SSA's records, allowing SSA to authenticate the individual.