Nine of the UK's biggest banks accumulated over 33 days of it downtime over the last two years with millions of people affected.
Data Received from Banks by mps on the treasury committee revised at Least 158 Banking It Fail Failures Between January 2023 and February 2025, Equering to over 800 hours of services of service of service ..
Following the recent three-day Outage experienced by barclays bank customersWhich began on payday at the end of January, MPS Demanded Answers From bank ceos.
Chief Executives At Barclays, Santander, Natwest, Danske Bank UK, Nationwide Building Society, Allied Irish Bank, HSBC, Bank of Ireland and Lloyds Banking Group WWAN GROP WERE Information On the Scale and Impact of it failures over the past two years.
The data does not include the recent barclays crash, but the bank did provide mps with details of the effect of the outage. It revled that during the three-day incident 56% of online payments failed due to “Severe Degradation of Mainframe Processing performance,” according to the Treasury Committee. Barclays said it will pay between £ 5m and £ 7.5m to customers as a result of the outge and in total barclays count pay out up to £ 12.5m in compensation Due to outages in space
The banks told mps that systems and internal software malfunctions were common reasons for the it failures.
Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Treasury Committee, Said for Families “Living Pay Check to Pay Check” Banking Downtime is “A Terrifying Experience”.
“The fact there has been enough outages to fill a whole month with the last two years shows customers' Frustrations are complete valid. The reality is that this data shows even the most successful banks and building societies hit technical glitches. What's critical is they react swiftly and ensure customers are kept informed throughout, “She added.
Last month, Hillier said the Closure of High Street Branches In favor of online banking means bank crazes hit customers harder. “The rapidly declining number of high street bank branchs makes the impact of it outages even more painful; That's why I've decides to write to some of our biggest banks and building societies. “
She thanked banks for their responses and was “ressured” they are taking action to minimise the impact of it failures on customers.
Barclays Bank Reported The Most Incidents, 33, With Allied Irish Bank, HSBC and Santander Next With 32 Each. Nationwide Building Society Reported 18 Outages, Natwest 13 and lloyds bank 12.
Natwest reported the most downtime at 194 hours, followed by HSBC with 176.
Just last week a further payday outage hit banks including loyds bank, nationwide, tsb and nationwide, according to outage Monitoring Organization downdetector,
One Senior Banking It Professional Said That If a Number of Banks Experience Problems at the same time, it points to a related factor. “If it's lots of banks, it makes me think there's a common denominator, like they using a supplier or software that's shared by multiple banks, because it wolded Them to go down on the same day, “He said.
Further pointing to a potential problem with external it, the expert 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. For example, finance departments inside the banks do not like the risk of chaos at an unprecedented end of the month trust they're doing month-ed Accounting and Don't'Ted Want Technology Problems. “