[00:00.49]When anyone opens a current account at a bank, he is lending the bank money, repayment of which he may demand at any time, either in cash or by drawing a cheque in favour of another person.
[00:14.74]Primarily, the banker-customer relationship is that of debtor and creditor -- who is which depending on whether the customer's account is in credit or is overdrawn.
[00:28.23]But, in addition to that basically simple concept, the bank and its customer owe a large number of obligations to one another.
[00:37.89]Many of these obligations can give in to problems and complications but a bank customer, unlike, say, a buyer of goods, cannot complain that the law is loaded against him.
[00:50.99]The bank must obey its customer's instructions, and not those of anyone else.
[00:56.58]When, for example, a customer first opens an account, he instructs the bank to debit his account only in respect of cheques draw by himself.
[01:06.82]He gives the bank specimens of his signature, and there is a very firm rule that the bank has no right or authority to pay out a customer's money on a cheques on which its customer's signature has been forged.
[01:21.00]It makes no difference that the forgery may have been a very skilful one: the bank must recognize its customer's signature.
[01:29.80]For this reason there is no risk to the customer in the practice, adopted by banks, of printing the customer's name on his cheques.
[01:38.35]If this facilitates forgery, it is the bank which will lose, not the customer.
