Barclays has confirmed that it’s expecting to pay customers between £5m and £7.5m following failures in its IT systems.
It comes following new data published by the Treasury Committee, which revealed that 9 of the top banks and building societies operating in the UK had at least 803 hours, the equivalent of 33 days, of unplanned tech and systems outages over the last 2 years.
There were at least 158 banking IT failures between January 2023 and February this year, meaning millions of customers struggled to access and use their banking services.
“For families and individuals living paycheck to paycheck, losing access to banking services on payday can be a terrifying experience. 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. And we know some can go on for several days,” said Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, Dame Meg Hillier MP.
“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.
“I am grateful to the banks for their responses and reassured that they are doing all they can to minimise the impact on their customers. I am particularly thankful to those who are compensating their customers well for the stress they endure and would encourage all to reflect on whether they are doing enough in that regard.”
These figures don’t include the most recent problems at Barclays at the end of January and other banks at the end of last month.
READ MORE – Barclays digital services go down on payday
The Committee said that it would be requesting further information from these banks.
Despite not including the information in their aggregated figures, Barclays said that 56% of online payments during the incident failed due to ‘severe degradation’ of their Mainframe processing performance. It also told the Committee that it expected to pay between £5m and £7.5m in compensation to customers for ‘inconvenience or distress’.
When taking into account all of the information shared by Barclays, the committee said that this means the bank could pay out up to £12.5m due to outages. The second highest amount paid out by a firm in the last two years is £350,000 by the Bank of Ireland.
