The cleaning is easy; the access is the contract
Branch cleaning is not technically demanding. Hard floors, some carpet, glass, a handful of offices, a washroom and a staff kitchenette. If a cleaning company can handle a small professional office, it can handle the physical work in a branch.
What separates suppliers is everything around the work. A branch crew is inside the building after hours with cash on site, an ATM in the wall, customer files in cabinets and workstations, and — in most branches — nobody watching. The evaluation should be weighted accordingly. In practice that means the vendor-risk conversation comes first and the price conversation second, which is the opposite of how most cleaning procurement runs.
Six questions that separate suppliers
- Who is actually in the building? Named, consistent, screened crew — or whoever the agency dispatched that night? Rotating faces make a vendor-risk file impossible to keep current, and they defeat the purpose of screening in the first place.
- How is access controlled, per branch? Key-holding, alarm codes, escorted entry or a hybrid. Agreed in writing, per site, with changes routed through a named contact.
- What happens on an alarm? An agreed call order and a written incident note the same night. A crew that trips an alarm and says nothing is a worse problem than the alarm.
- Is the vendor bonded as well as insured? Two different instruments. Both certificates, current, on file.
- Will they complete the security questionnaire? The actual document, honestly, including the questions where the answer is no. A brochure returned in place of a completed questionnaire is itself the answer.
- What is out of scope, in writing? Cash, vault and cash rooms, ATM interiors, confidential paper and shred consoles.
What a crew should never touch
The list is short and it should appear in the contract rather than being understood informally:
| Out of scope | Whose it is |
|---|---|
| Cash, in any form | Branch staff only |
| Vault, cash room, cash-handling area | Branch staff, or escorted on written terms |
| ATM interior — servicing, refilling, cleaning inside | Armoured carrier or machine servicer |
| Locked shred consoles and confidential waste | Bonded shredding vendor |
| Paper on desks, printers and meeting tables | Nobody but branch staff — even if it looks like rubbish |
The last row causes more trouble than the rest combined, because it looks like helpfulness. A crew tidying a meeting room and clearing the papers left on the table has done exactly what a good cleaner does in an ordinary office and exactly the wrong thing in a branch. The standing instruction has to be explicit: if a bin or a surface near a workstation is ambiguous, leave it and note it.
The 24-hour ATM vestibule is a separate job
Most branch cleaning specifications treat the ATM lobby as part of the building. It is not, operationally. It is open when the branch is closed, which means it accumulates overnight and is at its worst exactly when the first customer of the day sees it.
Three things follow from that:
- It needs its own pass, early, before opening — not a visit at eleven at night when it has been clean for two hours.
- Winter changes it completely. Salt and slush tracked into a small tiled space with no matting depth is a slip risk and a floor-finish problem at once. Entrance matting and a neutralising floor routine matter more here than anywhere else in the branch.
- The machine's exterior touch surfaces are part of it — screen, keypad, card reader surround, and the panel people lean on. The interior never is.
There is also a human dimension that a specification should address rather than ignore. Vestibules are warm and open all night, and people shelter in them. The correct arrangement is that the crew cleans the space and reports it to the branch. Asking a cleaner to move someone on is asking them to do something they are not trained for, not insured for, and should not be doing.
Working during opening hours
Some tasks belong in the day: a washroom check, the ATM lobby at midday, entrance glass after rain, a spill. Where volumes justify it, a day-porter arrangement handles them properly rather than pushing everything into the night.
The one non-negotiable during hours is accessibility. A branch is a service open to the public, and the accessible route, the counter approach and every doorway must stay clear. That means no cords across a path, no cart parked at a corner, no wet floor left unsigned or unmonitored on the main approach. It is a simple rule that gets broken by cleaners who are used to working in empty buildings, which is another argument for a consistent crew who know the site.
Documentation worth keeping
There is no cleaning regulator here, so the useful records are the ones that serve the institution's own processes:
- A signed cleaning log per visit — areas cleaned, products with DIN where a disinfectant was used, who did the work. Its most valuable property is what it omits: the areas nobody entered.
- Washroom cleaning records — expected of any Ontario employer with a washroom under the OHSA amendments introduced by Bill 190.
- Screening confirmations, bond and insurance certificates, refreshed annually and filed against the vendor record.
- Incident notes — alarms, doors found unsecured, anything unusual. Same night, in writing, however minor.
That set answers most of what a vendor-risk review asks, and it takes a contractor no meaningful extra effort to produce. A supplier who resists it is telling you how the first incident will be handled.
Portfolios: one specification beats twelve local arrangements
Institutions with more than a handful of branches often end up with cleaning arranged locally, branch by branch, because it started that way and nobody consolidated it. The cost of that is not primarily money — it is that nothing is comparable. Different scopes, different screening standards, different records, and a vendor-risk file with a dozen entries in it.
A single specification across the portfolio gives the same scope everywhere, the same screening standard, the same reporting format and one contract to review. It also makes an obvious question answerable: is every branch getting what the specification says, or only the ones with attentive managers?
Frequently asked questions
Is there a cleaning standard banks are regulated against?
No, and any vendor implying otherwise is inventing one. A bank is supervised federally by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions and a credit union by its provincial regulator, but those bodies supervise the institution — not its cleaning contractor. There is no such thing as OSFI-compliant cleaning. What actually governs the arrangement is the institution's own vendor-risk and physical-security policy, and the right response to that document is to answer it honestly rather than market at it.
What does bonding mean, and why does it matter here?
A fidelity bond protects against loss caused by dishonest acts of the contractor's employees — theft, essentially. It is a different instrument from general liability insurance, which covers damage and injury. Most buildings care about liability; a financial institution cares about both, and bonding is usually the specific word in the vendor questionnaire. A contractor should be able to produce a current certificate for each, not a line in a brochure.
Should cleaners have keys and alarm codes?
That is the institution's decision, and it should be made per branch and written down rather than inherited. The three common models are key-holding with alarm codes, escorted access by a staff member, and a hybrid where the crew holds keys but a duress or alarm event triggers an agreed call order. What matters is not which model you pick but that it is documented, that changes go through a named contact rather than whoever is on shift, and that an alarm event produces a written incident note the same night.
Who should empty the shred consoles?
Not the cleaner. Locked shred consoles are serviced by a bonded shredding vendor with its own chain of custody, and the cleaning contract should say so explicitly. The related rule matters just as much: the crew removes general waste and recycling only, and does not remove paper from a desk, a printer tray or a meeting-room table — even paper that looks like rubbish. The standing instruction for an ambiguous bin should be to leave it and report it.
Why does the ATM vestibule need a separate visit?
Because it is the only part of the branch open when nobody is in it. Overnight it accumulates receipts, flyers, cups and litter, and for five months of the year tracked-in slush and road salt that dulls the floor and streaks the glass. It is also the first thing every customer sees whether the branch is trading or not. Folding it into the overnight branch clean means it is cleaned before it gets dirty; an early-morning pass before opening is the arrangement that actually works.
What should happen if someone has sheltered in the ATM lobby overnight?
The crew cleans the space and reports it to the branch. They do not move anyone on. That is not a cleaner's job, it is not safe to ask of one, and a contractor who offers it as a service is offering something outside their competence and their insurance. Branches should have their own protocol for this, usually involving branch management and, where appropriate, local outreach services rather than the cleaning crew.
Can cleaning happen during opening hours?
Some of it should — washroom checks, the ATM lobby at midday, entrance glass after rain — and a day-porter arrangement suits busier branches. The absolute rule during hours is that the accessible route stays clear: cords, cones, carts and wet floors must never block the accessible path, the counter approach or a doorway. A branch is a public-facing service and that access is not negotiable for the convenience of a cleaning schedule.
Does a multi-branch portfolio need one contract?
Usually yes. One specification, one point of contact and consistent records make a portfolio comparable, and they let a regional manager see whether every branch is on the same routine instead of taking each branch manager's word for it. It also means one vendor-risk file rather than a dozen, which is often the deciding argument for the people who actually approve the contract.
Note: This guide is for informational purposes only and is not legal, security or regulatory advice. Vendor screening, physical security and access control at a financial institution are governed by the institution's own policies and its regulators' expectations of the institution, not of its suppliers. Verify any requirement against your own vendor-risk framework and advisors before relying on it.