The resurrection of Mr. Smith

"Nothing in life is certain except death and taxes" - Benjamin Franklin

The truth of the second of these is undeniable, but you could be forgiven for doubting the first if you worked in the branch office of some banks.  How would you react if, as a bank teller, your computer records showed that the customer standing in front of you supposedly died a year ago?  “Um,… how are you feeling today Mr. Smith, you’re looking a little pale?”

What leads to this situation is often a muddle of processes, and people using workarounds to beat the system.  For instance, I’ve discovered that a common practice in some banks is to flag a favoured customer as deceased so that they can close a savings account and withdraw money without a penalty.

In other cases the confusion has come as the result of genuine bereavement.  Rather than comply with documented procedures, following the death of a customer somebody has decided that it is more expedient to over-type the original customer’s details with the name of the person who is granted probate.  The one field that can’t be changed by anyone once it has been entered is the date of death; so there it sits, alongside someone else's details.

Given that this is such a sensitive topic, I am, on the one hand, astonished at how some people are willing to act so flippantly, but I also understand why people find these workarounds so useful.  The consequence of their action may be something that can be regarded as a data quality problem, but unless the inadequacies of the underlying processes are resolved, any fix of the data will not be sustainable.