Bank and building society users hit by 33 days of outages in two years, say MPs
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Treasury committee finds disruption a result of 158 IT incidents affecting millions of customers
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Dame Meg Hillier MP, chair of the Treasury select committee, said losing access to banking services could be a ‘terrifying experience’ for those living paycheck to paycheck.



Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the Treasury select committee, said losing access to banking services on payday can be “a terrifying experience” for families and individuals living paycheck to paycheck, explained in a statement.

“Even when rectified relatively quickly, it can cause real panic, which is why we wanted to get a proper understanding of why unplanned banking outages happen and how banks and building societies respond.

“The fact there has been enough outages to fill a whole month within the last two years shows customers’ frustrations are completely 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.”

Barclays reported the most incidents, 33, which lasted 93 hours in total. It said it has paid out up to £4.99m compensation.

That, though, did not include , when customers of TSB, Nationwide, First Direct and Lloyds Banking Group – including its Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland brands – struggled to log into online bank accounts or suffer from payment delays.

Losing access to banking services on payday can be “a terrifying experience” for families and individuals living paycheck to paycheck, explained Dame Meg Hillier MP, chair of the Treasury select committee.

“Even when rectified relatively quickly, it can cause real panic, which is why we wanted to get a proper understanding of why unplanned banking outages happen and how banks and building societies respond.

“The fact there has been enough outages to fill a whole month within the last two years shows customers’ frustrations are completely 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.”

Barclays reported the most incidents, 33, which lasted 93 hours in total. It said it has paid out up to £4.99m compensation.

That, though, did not include , during which 56% of online payments failed due to “severe degradation” of its mainframe processing performance. It expects to pay a total of between £5m and £7.5m in compensation to customers for “inconvenience or distress”.

Among other banks, NatWest racked up the most time lost to outages, 194 hours, through just 13 incidents, for which it paid out £348,000. HSBC paid out £232,697 to its customers after 32 incidents led to 176 hours of disruption.
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