you need to assign your structure a name, if you have a look at the code example I gave it will work:

Code:
typedef struct customer 
{ 
  char fname[20]; 
  char lname[20]; 
  char initial; 
  long socialnum;
  double balance; 
  struct customer *next; 
} CUSTOMER;
the last line : } CUSTOMER;
allow you to treat this as a standard data type and decalre variables like:
CUSTOMER john;
and then you have a variable called john.
alternatevly you could use:

bankrecords = (struct customer *) malloc(sizeof(struct customer));
I think, but the first way will work and make it heaps easier to assign new variables, etc.