Computer glitch forces NatWest and RBS to open branches on Sunday
Branches of NatWest and RBS in the region are open on a Sunday for the first time ever after a technical glitch caused a huge backlog in customers' payments.
The banking group's boss Stephen Hester has issued a public apology for the computer fault that left many people without access to their accounts and unable to pay bills.
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In an unprecedented move to open branches today, staff will be on hand until midday.
But the glitch, although now fixed, has left many customers still unable to carry out transactions because of the overwhelming backlog to update millions of accounts.
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RBS Group chief executive Mr Hester said: "I am very sorry for the difficulties people are experiencing.
"Our customers rely on us day in and day out to get things right, and on this occasion we have let them down.
"Right now my top priority, and the priority of the entire RBS Group, is to fix these problems and put things right for our customers.
"This is taking time, but I want to reassure people that we are working around the clock to resolve these problems as quickly as we are able.
"I also want to be clear that where our customers are facing hardship or difficulty we can and will help them.
"I also want to reassure customers that no one will be left permanently out of pocket as a result of this, and again, they should contact us directly about this."
The problems are thought to have begun on Thursday when an attempted software upgrade for the banking group's payment processing corrupted the system.
Comments
by BCFCfinker
Monday, June 25 2012, 2:19PM
“Some insight to this problem:
http://tinyurl.com/7fpye8o
RBS are a little coy by the looks of it about what went wrong.
And general comment about it:
http://tinyurl.com/7th3ert
I have no doubt that this week we'll have some opportunistic advertising done by other banks along the lines of 'join our bank, it's as simple as a phone call...'. Meanwhile, front line bank staff (who did not cause the problem) will be taking the flak.”
by BCFCfinker
Monday, June 25 2012, 12:29PM
“Number of things...
I suspect headless chicken syndrome has taken place and the blame game has/will take place shortly. By the looks of it, RBS outsources it's support to India. This would have been done for bean counting reasons because they thought it would save them a penny or two, which obviously would have been reflected in someones bonus. If you have a sardonic sense of humour, that money they've saved has well truly gone out of the window to be replaced with incalculable damage to the RBS (effectively a state owned bank) brand. This does not help the poor customer who will no doubt be hit by costs.
It would appear that systems used by RBS are antiquated and management have waited and waited to replace it with more modern systems. Guess what, I suspect that they didn't want to upgrade because it was costly and they wanted to save a penny or two, maybe for reasons that someones bonus depended on it?
It would appear that they had no back out plan or it was pants. Ummm... this might indicate that things are a little slip shod.
No doubt the FSA (to be abolished shortly I believe) will investigate this. Maybe they should look to see if risk taking is based on the interests of the customer/shareholders/business OR based on bonus reasons.
Banking and customer is king... my rear end.”