MPs have reached out to the heads of the UK’s largest banks, aiming to understand how IT failures are impacting their operations. This follows a significant outage at Barclays that disrupted services during payday last month.
Barclays faced a major three-day outage from January 31 to February 2, coinciding with crucial times for many customers, including the HMRC’s self-assessment deadline. The Treasury Committee sent letters to nine banks and building societies, asking top executives for details about IT outages in the past two years. They need to respond by February 26.
Barclays received a set of ten questions, while the other banks were asked four. The inquiries focused on what caused the outage, its impact on customers, and how Barclays plans to prevent similar issues in the future. Although Barclays quickly dismissed the idea of a cyber security breach, they haven’t provided specifics on what led to the outage.
The other eight banks were asked how often they experienced service interruptions due to IT failures, how many customers were affected, compensation payouts made, and the reasons behind those failures.
Treasury Committee chair Meg Hillier pointed out the serious consequences of IT issues for customers. “When a bank’s system fails, our constituents can’t access vital services for everyday needs,” she stated. The incident at Barclays, occurring during such a critical time, raises concerns about either unfortunate timing or poor planning.
With fewer high street branches, outages have a more significant impact. Hillier emphasized the urgent need to address these failures, given the shift towards online banking.
An IT industry source familiar with Barclays remarked on the bank’s cautious nature when discussing IT issues. They speculated that the outage might have stemmed from a change in software or infrastructure that unintentionally disrupted multiple systems, highlighting the potential challenges in managing banking technology today.