Tech outages at financial firms double as watchdog warns of data breach risk November 27, 2018 IT failures at financial institutions have more than doubled in the last year, the Financial Conduct Authority has revealed, as firms fight to update their legacy technology to keep apace with fintech startups. In the 12 months to October, the UK's financial firms reported a 138 per cent increase in technology outages to the FCA, as [...]
Bank of England takes action over Visa card payment outage March 8, 2019 The Bank of England (BoE) has taken action against Visa following an outage last year that caused more than 2m card transactions to fail. The BoE has announced supervisory action to ensure that Visa Europe enforces the recommendations made following an independent review by EY in the wake of the incident. Read more: TSB online [...]
Atom Bank poised to appoint Citi for potential sale to Spanish bank January 14, 2019 Digital lender Atom Bank is in talks with advisers over a potential instruction that could lead to its takeover by Spanish banking behemoth BBVA. According to Sky News, the Durham-based bank is in discussions with Citi about a role advising the board of the business on its future options. Last year Atom Bank raised nearly [...]
Lloyds online banking down: Customers unable to access accounts as Lloyds suffers outage February 11, 2019 Lloyds' online banking system crashed this morning, leaving some customers unable to access the service. The failure followed scheduled maintenance to the bank’s online banking, mobile app and tablet app services over the weekend. Customers were able to access online banking from around 5pm this evening. Read more: Noel Edmonds’ lawyer to take on Lloyds over Bristol [...]
City Moves for 10 April 2019 – Who’s switching jobs at Actis, Funding Options and Feast It? April 10, 2019 Today's City Moves includes Actis, Funding Options and Feast It. Actis Actis, a global growth markets investor, has announced the appointment of Susan Wilkins as chief financial officer. Susan will be based in London and report to Torbjorn Caesar, senior partner of Actis. Susan will join the Actis executive committee. Susan was the chief financial officer and [...]
Banks begin tempting businesses away from RBS as £350m switching scheme goes live February 25, 2019 Banks have begun tempting businesses to switch away from Royal Bank of Scotland as part of a scheme to boost competition in the sector. As a condition of RBS’ £45bn government bailout during the financial crisis – £350m of a state aid package has been provided to eleven other banks to help them attract firms. Read [...]
Lloyds Bank suffers IT outage as customers struggle to send and receive money January 18, 2019 Thousands of Lloyds Bank customers were unable to make payments this afternoon after the bank experienced an IT outage. Customers complained of difficulties transferring money from their accounts due to issues related to the lender's Faster Payments system, which allows customers to send and receive payments by internet or phone. "We are aware that some customers [...]
The big banks are losing their grip on the market to fintechs and challengers, but can big data save the day? March 7, 2019 Over a year on from the launch of Open Banking, and following last year’s IT catastrophes at Visa and TSB, it is no surprise that many in our industry are considering how effectively the big banks are reacting to this era of transformative technological upheaval. It is estimated that the five biggest UK banks hold [...]
Metro, Starling and ClearBank win £280m from RBS competition fund February 22, 2019 Three challenger banks have been awarded a combined £280m from an RBS fund designed to boost business banking competition. Metro Bank, Starling Bank and ClearBank have all given funds to boost their business account offerings and increase competition in the sector. Metro Bank received the largest share of the pot despite a recent accounting error [...]
Barclays faces probe from Treasury Select Committee into six-hour outage September 20, 2018 Barclays faces an investigation from the Treasury Select Committee after it yesterday became the latest lender to experience a major systems failure. Millions of customers were unable to access online banking, telephone banking, as well as branch services for as long as six hours. The Treasury Select Committee is likely to ask the bank similar [...]