Quake victims stuck with no ID because their possessions are in condemned buildings -- including Kiwibank chairman and director Michael Cullen -- are being given leeway by the bank.
Dr Cullen appeared before Parliament's finance and expenditure select committee today and revealed he had been caught without his wallet and keys after the quake -- something he emphasised was minor considering what others went through.
While Dr Cullen was in Christchurch co-chairing the The US-NZ Council partnership the quake struck. He was unable to return to the Rydges Hotel in the CBD where he had been staying and was stuck without keys and cards.
"You don't realise you become entirely dependent on all these things, without your driver's licence, without your credit card, without anything how do you get money out of the bank, how do you do anything else?" he told NZPA after the hearing.
Back in Wellington, the former deputy prime minister went to a Kiwibank branch.
"They knew who I was but the problem was I had to fill in a form saying means of identification and at that point... I didn't have my passport with me so I had no means of identification and that would be a problem for a lot of people in this situation.
"How do banks, while not sort of opening themselves up to people getting credit cards in somebody else's name, react in a way which is flexible enough?"
However he was able to get help.
"In the end I think she wrote personal knowledge or something like that because they had been warned I was going to come in."
While being interviewed by NZPA one of Dr Cullen's former Labour MPs gave him a key to party deputy leader Annette King's house -- his copy was on the key-ring trapped in the hotel.
Kiwibank is wholly owned by NZ Post and its group chief executive Brian Roche said the bank had been flexible dealing with quake victims.
"People are distressed they don't have any personal id and they need to access money. What we took is as best as we could, a pragmatic approach, we have been very liberal about documentation and proof of id and you know... we've had no feed back that we've got that wrong."