Member Article

6 of Britain's biggest banks suffer major IT problems every two weeks

Six of the biggest British banks have been found to suffer at least one major IT glitch every two weeks, according to Which? Money.

The specific research found that the issues reported are preventing customers from making payments at an average rate of more than once a day and that there were 302 incidents that prevented customers from making payments in the last nine months of 2018.

Out of all of the banks, Barclays had the most IT failures over the nine months, at 41. Lloyds had 37, Bank of Scotland/Halifax had 31 and Natwest had 26, Which? found.

TSB, where the introduction of a new IT system last year caused 1.9 million people to lose access to online banking services, reported just 16 incidents. Nationwide reported five.

Jenny Ross, Which? Money’s editor, said: “Our research shows that these major banking glitches – which can cause huge stress and inconvenience to those affected – are even more common than we feared. This highlights why it is so important that a regulator is given responsibility to protect cash as a backup when technology fails and to ensure no one is left behind as digital payments become more common.”

Tim Dunton, MD, Nimbus Hosting commented: “Once again the banking industry’s ageing IT infrastructure has been exposed, revealing a catalogue of errors and glitches that will have profound consequences for customers. Downtime remains a major issue, putting critical business transactions at risk and undermining confidence in the system. Moving forward, it’s vital that banks take a proactive approach to address these issues. This means recognising the growing competition from digital challenger banks, beefing up security systems and improving operations as a priority”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Nick Till .