Royal Bank of Scotland has apologised as it resolved the IT problem that caused payments for 600,000 customers to go missing from their accounts.
The 79% taxpayer-owned bank said it had now put the payments into the accounts of those customers affected by Wednesday’s glitch, when transactions such as wages, tax credits and disability allowances failed to appear in accounts. Customers of RBS, NatWest and Ulster were affected.
An RBS spokesperson said on Friday: “We can confirm that the issues customers were experiencing in relation to delayed credits and debits have now been resolved and accounts have been updated.”
“We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience and distress that this has caused our customers. If any customers are still experiencing issues please contact our call centres or come into a branch where are our staff are ready to help. We will continue our work to make sure that no customer will be left out of pocket as a result of this issue.”
MP Andrew Tyrie, the chair of the Treasury select committee, is writing to the RBS chief executive, Ross McEwan, for reassurance that such incidents cannot keep happening.
The bank had originally warned it might take until Saturday for the situation to be resolved, and during a presentation to analysts and investors on Thursday had admitted it could not rule out other IT failures taking place again.
Simon McNamara, RBS’s chief administrative officer, said: “I’d love to say we will never have a technical failing again. If you find somebody that tells you that I’ll tell you you’ve found a liar.”
The bank intends to spend £150m a year on improving the resilience of its IT systems which have let down customers on numerous occasions in the past. The most notable failure was in 2012, when 6.5 million customers were unable to access their accounts for days and even weeks. That incident resulted in a £56m fine from regulators.
The Financial Conduct Authority said it had been working with RBS to check how the bank had handled this week’s problem, but added it was too early to say whether there would be an investigation.
McNamara said RBS had learned lessons from the previous IT meltdown and applied them to resolve the latest one, which was caused by the bank being unable to process a file of payments.
RBS was unable to say how much the problem had cost following its promise to ensure no customers had been left out of pocket, although it was another dent to its reputation. The bank has been fined for rigging Libor and foreign exchange markets and is braced for a multibillion pound settlement because of the way it sold mortgage bonds before the finanical crisis.
In an effort to bolster its reputation, a branch of NatWest is Huddersfield is throwing open its doors to a BBC documentary. The film, which looks at the role banks play in local communities, is to be broadcast on Tuesday.
