Bank IT failures such as this week’s Royal Bank of Scotland crash are unacceptable, the head of the banking industry body said today.
Anthony Browne, chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association, said: “A lot of banks have creaking IT systems. They are incredibly complicated and at the same time the use of mobile banking is exploding. That’s why banks are spending £3 billion a year upgrading their systems.”
The RBS crisis hit 600,000 payments into people’s accounts. The taxpayer-controlled lender is still sorting out tens of thousands of payments delayed on Tuesday night . It said it hopes to have all the payments through by Saturday. “It was unacceptable but it was one bank and around 5% of its payments which were delayed,” Browne told the BBC. “No customer should be left out of pocket. If you go into overdraft because that’s the fault of the bank then you should not be charged anything.” He added: “Banks could have spent more on IT but they are trying to put things right. Will they get it right 100% of the time? No. Are outages acceptable? No.”
Lloyds boss Antonio Horta-Osorio told the BBA annual conference banks must stop complaining about ring-fencing their retail operations from their casino investment banking. “Ring-fencing is happening. The industry should accept this and move on,” he said.
