Major UK banks hit by payday digital banking problems again

Customers of multiple banks have reported problems banking online, as they struggle to access services on payday for the second month running.

The problems came two days after MPs were due to receive details of how IT failures have affected banks over the past two years.

At the end of January, customers of Barclays Bank were left unable to access app and online banking services following a major IT outage that lasted three days.

The latest problems, yet again on payday, have hit Lloyds Bank, Nationwide, TSB and Halifax, according to outage monitoring organisation Downdetector.

One senior banking IT professional, who asked to remain anonymous, said that if a number of banks experience problems at the same time it points to a relating factor.

“If it’s lots of banks, it makes me think there’s a common denominator like they’re using a supplier or software that’s shared by multiple banks, because it would be coincidental for several of them to go down on the same day,” he said.

Further pointing to a potential problem with external IT, he added that in his experience, banks try to avoid making IT changes at the end of the month.

“End of the month is normally a time banks avoid making changes,” he said. “For example, financing departments inside the banks do not like the risk of chaos at an unprecedented end of the month because they’re month-end accounting and don’t want technology problems.”

In contrast, he said the problems at Barclays pointed to something related to an internal change.

The problems come just days after a deadline set by MPs on the Treasury Committee for UK bank bosses to provide information on the scale and impact of IT failures over the past two years. 

The questions set by MPs for Barclays included what caused the latest outage and how it affected customers, as well as how the bank intended to prevent such a failure from happening again.

The other eight bank bosses were asked to provide an overview of the number of instances and amount of time in total services have been unavailable to customers due to IT failure over the past two years, how many customers have been affected, the amount of compensation that has been paid to their customers, and a description of the reason for the failures. You can read the letters to the bank CEOs here.

Following the Barclay’s problems, Treasury Committee chair Meg Hillier, MP said: “When a bank’s IT system goes down, it can be a real problem for our constituents, who were relying on accessing certain services so they can buy food or pay bills. For it to happen at a major bank such as Barclays at such a crucial time of year is either bad luck or bad planning. Either way, it’s important to learn what has happened and what will be done about it.”

She added that the closure of high street branches in favour of online banking means bank crashes hit customers harder. “The rapidly declining number of high street bank branches makes the impact of IT outages even more painful; that’s why I’ve decided to write to some of our biggest banks and building societies,” said Hillier.

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