Check Restructuring Initiative at the Reserve Banks

In February 2003, the Federal Reserve Banks announced an initiative to align their infrastructure with the declining use of checks by reducing the number of locations at which they process checks. Since that time, the Reserve Banks have discontinued check operations at many of their forty-five check-processing locations and, by 2010, expect to be processing checks at no more than four full-service processing sites. For further information, see the Reserve Banks' Financial Services web site.

To reflect the underlying changes in the Reserve Banks' operations, the Federal Reserve Board is periodically amending the routing symbol lists in appendix A of Regulation CC. Each amendment deletes the appendix's reference to the Reserve Bank office that will no longer process checks and reassigns that office's routing symbols to another Reserve Bank office. The effective date of each final rule coincides with the effective date of the underlying Reserve Bank check processing changes. For example, checks previously processed by the Federal Reserve's Pittsburgh office began to be handled by the Cleveland office on November 1, 2003. Correspondingly, the Board's final rule, effective November 1, 2003, deleted appendix A's reference to the Pittsburgh office and reassigned the routing symbols that had been listed under that office to the Cleveland office.

To give affected banks ample time to make any needed processing changes, the Board is publishing each final rule in the Federal Register at least sixty days prior to the elimination of check operations at the applicable Reserve Bank office.