LetterAgent
Mail physical letters by just asking your AI assistant.
Banks still fax because their verification, fraud, and loan departments were built around faxed documents decades ago, and those departments still accept a faxed signature or statement without a fight. Changing that channel means retraining staff, rewriting procedures, and re-certifying systems across thousands of branches.
Email is faster, but for a bank it raises a problem fax does not: anyone can send an email that looks like it came from a customer. A spoofed email asking a bank to change an address or release information is a daily threat, and banks have built layers of defense against it. A fax, by contrast, arrives on a dedicated line tied to a known number, and the bank's staff treat it as a document from a physical source rather than a message that can be copied and re-sent with one click.
That does not make fax secure in any absolute sense. Fax lines can be misdialed, and a shared office machine can expose pages to the wrong eyes. But banks judge risk department by department, and for verification and servicing work, the fax workflow has a long, auditable history: a received fax, a header, a filing stamp, and a clerk's initials. Replacing that with an emailed PDF means building a new chain of custody and proving it to auditors and regulators.
A large bank runs dozens of back-office systems, some of them decades old, and many were designed when fax was the standard way to receive signed paper. Those systems accept fax images directly into document queues, where clerks index them by account number. An emailed attachment would need new intake software, new virus and fraud screening, and new retention rules before it could land in the same queue. The cost of that change, spread across every branch and department, is hard to justify when the fax line already works.
Regulation adds friction too. Banks keep records under rules that specify how documents are received, stored, and retrieved. A fax that lands in an imaging system with a timestamp fits the existing retention schedule. A new channel means new compliance sign-off, and compliance teams rarely rush to approve a change that offers no clear benefit to the bank itself.
| Bank task | Why fax still fits | What customers should do |
|---|---|---|
| Verifying an account or balance | Verification desks still publish fax numbers | Use the number on the bank's own site or statement |
| Disputing a charge | Signed affidavits arrive the same day | Keep the confirmation page with your copy |
| Requesting a loan payoff | Servicers process faxed requests routinely | Ask for the payoff in writing, then confirm by phone |
| Responding to a levy or order | Legal desks log fax headers | Send early; do not rely on a last-day fax alone |
Yes, with a similar shape. Canadian banks run verification, mortgage servicing, and estate departments that still accept faxed instructions, and many branches keep a fax machine behind the counter for exactly that work. Canadian privacy and record-keeping rules push in the same direction as US rules: a channel with a known history is easier to defend than a new one. Customers in Canada will also find that credit unions and smaller institutions lean on fax even more, since they have fewer staff to build and guard a new intake channel.
Use the fax number the bank itself publishes, not one from a search result or a forwarded email, since fake bank fax numbers are a known scam route. Include a cover note with your name, account number only if the bank asks for it, and a callback number. Keep the confirmation page, and call the department to confirm receipt on anything tied to a deadline, such as a dispute window or a payoff date. A confirmation proves the machines connected; a phone call proves a person has the pages.
For US and Canadian fax numbers, LetterAgent faxing is available in testing: ask your AI assistant, approve the exact quoted total, and the fax is sent after a one-time payment. Fax is in testing, so confirm it is active for your send before relying on it for a banking deadline.
Ready to fax it? Fax with LetterAgent: describe it to your AI assistant, approve the exact quoted price, and it is sent.
LetterAgent is a working name. Prices include print, postage, and our service fee. US prices in USD, Canadian prices in CAD (Canadian prices exclude applicable sales tax, added at checkout). Currently in private testing.
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