Mizuho Bank was hit by another system failure Thursday night, causing delays in about 300 foreign-currency remittances -- in its fourth system glitch over the past two weeks.
The bank, which also suffered a large-scale system breakdown on Feb. 28, said the hardware trouble has been now rectified.
When the system failure occurred at its data center at about 11:40 p.m. on Thursday, the bank said it failed to switch to a back-up device, making it impossible to transfer the money. The affected remittance operations were completed at about 7:45 p.m. on Friday.
If foreign-currency remittance operations to other banks are not processed by around 1 p.m., the remittance process is not completed on the same day.
Though Mizuho Bank was to ask remittance destination banks to treat the transfers as dated Friday, some companies are likely to incur losses due to the system failure, observers said.
On Feb. 28, about 80% of Mizuho Bank's ATMs were temporarily shut down, and ATMs failed to return a total of 5,244 cash cards and passbooks to customers -- which caused widespread public confusion.
In a separate incident, 29 of the bank's ATMs were temporarily shut down on March 3. Later, there were problems with term deposit transactions on March 7.
"There have been a series of problems. We apologize from the bottom of our hearts for the inconvenience caused to our customers," Mizuho Bank President Koji Fujiwara said at a press conference in Tokyo on Friday evening. The bank is still investigating the details of the cause of the failure, he said.
When Mizuho Bank experienced the system failure on Feb. 28, it increased the number of personnel operating the system. But the effort was not enough to prevent the fourth system glitch.
Following large-scale system failures in 2002 and 2011, the bank chose to completely revamp its core system. Mizuho Bank, which upgraded its core banking system in summer 2019, was scheduled to accelerate its digitization.
"We want to take a close look at the specifications of [our core banking system] MINORI. We will think about our future digital strategy by looking closely at our present situation," Fujiwara said.
Mizuho Bank has been lagging behind other megabanks in digitization, and the latest system trouble is likely to be a further blow, the observers said.
The Financial Services Agency is highly likely to take strict action against Mizuho Bank.
When a major computer system failure occurred in Mizuho's banking system in 2002, special advisors to the Mizuho Financial Group quit their posts. They were former presidents of the three banks -- Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, Fuji Bank and the Industrial Bank of Japan -- that had integrated their operations to form the financial giant.
When the 2011 system glitch hit the bank, the FSA issued a business improvement order again, and then Mizuho Bank President Satoru Nishibori resigned to take responsibility.
Fujiwara is set to become chairman in April.
There are likely to be growing calls for Mizuho Financial Group President Tatsufumi Sakai to take responsibility, the observers said.
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