Banking issues
Discussion
Anyone have any clue what is going on lately with all the banking issues??
Barclays down on Friday, for at least 48hrs. No real explanation.
Today, Lloyds AND Halifax having major issues apparently
I also have a business account with Starling and payments into that account are taking multiple hours to come through, whereas they are normally instant.
I'm not one for any conspiracy - just curious if there is some "behind the scenes" service which is the common denominator??
Barclays down on Friday, for at least 48hrs. No real explanation.
Today, Lloyds AND Halifax having major issues apparently
I also have a business account with Starling and payments into that account are taking multiple hours to come through, whereas they are normally instant.
I'm not one for any conspiracy - just curious if there is some "behind the scenes" service which is the common denominator??
BrettMRC said:
Usually self inflicted through a broken change or migration.
Any shared services tend to be fused/switchable and the main processes can still run without them.
Pretty much this.Any shared services tend to be fused/switchable and the main processes can still run without them.
Never blame malice for what can easily be explained by incompetence.
Doubly so if these banks outsourced their IT to the likes of Cognisant.
As someone in the industry but looking from the US, it always surprises me how many issues the UK banking industry has.
It could be that they are just reported more in the UK. We are not immune to impact in my company here in America. We recently had a 3 hour outage because there was a "danger to manifold" type event with one of our mainframes. This was on downdetector but not in the press. The impact was in the middle of the night though and resolved very early morning so not that interesting.
But, it seems there is always something going on in the UK. People not being able to take money out of Cash machines or receive money in this case. In 20 years of living in the US, I have never been impacted.
I do wonder, for other outages, if it is older infrastructure the banks rely on, or maybe more intermeadiaries. If you use a credit card to pay for something, it has to go through many steps, and companies, to get back to your own bank. Even if it has your bank name on the card.
It could be that they are just reported more in the UK. We are not immune to impact in my company here in America. We recently had a 3 hour outage because there was a "danger to manifold" type event with one of our mainframes. This was on downdetector but not in the press. The impact was in the middle of the night though and resolved very early morning so not that interesting.
But, it seems there is always something going on in the UK. People not being able to take money out of Cash machines or receive money in this case. In 20 years of living in the US, I have never been impacted.
I do wonder, for other outages, if it is older infrastructure the banks rely on, or maybe more intermeadiaries. If you use a credit card to pay for something, it has to go through many steps, and companies, to get back to your own bank. Even if it has your bank name on the card.
h0b0 said:
As someone in the industry but looking from the US, it always surprises me how many issues the UK banking industry has.
It could be that they are just reported more in the UK. We are not immune to impact in my company here in America. We recently had a 3 hour outage because there was a "danger to manifold" type event with one of our mainframes. This was on downdetector but not in the press. The impact was in the middle of the night though and resolved very early morning so not that interesting.
But, it seems there is always something going on in the UK. People not being able to take money out of Cash machines or receive money in this case. In 20 years of living in the US, I have never been impacted.
I do wonder, for other outages, if it is older infrastructure the banks rely on, or maybe more intermeadiaries. If you use a credit card to pay for something, it has to go through many steps, and companies, to get back to your own bank. Even if it has your bank name on the card.
The UK is so boring that a bank outage is major news. It happens in the US too. Just a few weeks ago, Citigroup had a major IT outage that took down several subsidiaries and BoA had an outage back in Oct 24.It could be that they are just reported more in the UK. We are not immune to impact in my company here in America. We recently had a 3 hour outage because there was a "danger to manifold" type event with one of our mainframes. This was on downdetector but not in the press. The impact was in the middle of the night though and resolved very early morning so not that interesting.
But, it seems there is always something going on in the UK. People not being able to take money out of Cash machines or receive money in this case. In 20 years of living in the US, I have never been impacted.
I do wonder, for other outages, if it is older infrastructure the banks rely on, or maybe more intermeadiaries. If you use a credit card to pay for something, it has to go through many steps, and companies, to get back to your own bank. Even if it has your bank name on the card.
With the US its usually airline outages that get the coverage though. Seems every year one major US carrier loses it's IT on a major holiday.
I think one of the issues in the UK is that people only have one bank. To me, the possibility of one bank having problems (in Australia) has lead me to keep cards from 2 different banks (as well as keeping a few quid in cash on me). Some people only have one bank or multiple cards from the same bank and no other means of payment, so in the rare event of an outage they're screwed.
With IT infrastructure, regardless of industry the cause is usually underinvestment and outsourcing. Lack of redundancy and getting rid of all the experienced and dedicated staff mean that outages are inevitable and prolonged as no one working on it gives a s
t. 
vikingaero said:
Countless legacy systems trying to integrate with each other.
IT will tell them what needs to be done and the cost to do so. This will be whittled down by management/directors, who will then complain when things go down.
IT are useless, under-estimate costs and over-estimate their ability to deliver change!IT will tell them what needs to be done and the cost to do so. This will be whittled down by management/directors, who will then complain when things go down.
Re things like Barclays; it's often caused by some external regulator's auditors (KMPG/Deloitte etc) holding historic IT services to today's IT standards, which means change forced at pace and consequent risk elevation. Sometimes you can mix into that offshoring which is sold as just as good as experienced onshore staff for less cost, but is more often just less good for less cost.
Why these things happening here become stories -- unlike the bazillion tiny retail banks and a few majors in the US, there aren't many UK retail banks and they are all huge so whenever one goes down it's typically millions of customers affected. Nobody hears about Bumfk credit union going down because nobody reads the news from Bakersfield. Even if they did, in the UK most things are instant these days, unlike in US banking where it's so backward they need 3rd party systems like venmo just to move money between accounts of friends.
Why these things happening here become stories -- unlike the bazillion tiny retail banks and a few majors in the US, there aren't many UK retail banks and they are all huge so whenever one goes down it's typically millions of customers affected. Nobody hears about Bumf
k credit union going down because nobody reads the news from Bakersfield. Even if they did, in the UK most things are instant these days, unlike in US banking where it's so backward they need 3rd party systems like venmo just to move money between accounts of friends.Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff