Natwest Technical Issues

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  • stormymonday
    stormymonday Posts: 9 Forumite
    edited 30 June 2012 at 5:45AM
    cottager wrote: »
    Letter from Stephen Hester to the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee
    29 June

    (extracts only)

    On the original incident:
    'The initial reviews we have carried out indicate that the problem was created when maintenance on systems, which are managed and operated by our team in Edinburgh, caused an error in our batch scheduler. This error caused the automated batch processing to fail on the night of Tuesday 19 June. The knock-on effects were substantial and required significant manual interventions from our team, compounded because the team could not access the record of transactions that had been processed up to the point of failure. The need to first establish at what point processing had stopped delayed subsequent batches and created a substantial backlog. It is not clear at this stage why that record was not available. Consequently, a significant number of customer account balances did not update as they should have from Thursday 21 June.'


    I am afraid that Hester still appears to be speaking with a forked tongue. I have done a few mainframe software upgrades in my time and I can not see anyway that a third party batch scheduler upgrade alone no matter how bug ridden or ineptly implemented would deny an IT department access to the 'record of transactions' since that processing should be maintained by the company's own software, reading its own data files and written to its own output reports and logs. In order to lose that information someone in house or some program written in house must have deleted it. We are still not being told the full facts here. This is a complete IT Governance failure not just a software 'glitch' caused by an aborted upgrade.
  • Well just checked and the missing cash paid in last monday has finally appeared in my account.
    Good job as all the direct debits due to go out monday havr already been taken...which is usual procedure.
    It looks like my account is back to normal.

    Fingers crossed for anyone who still isn't back to normal.

    Xxx
  • rb10
    rb10 Posts: 6,334 Forumite
    cottager wrote: »
    The text of the Treasury Select Committee's original letter (to which Hester was responding) should be available from a link on this page:
    http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/treasury-committee/news/tyrie-demands-answers-over-computer-failures/
    but instead of a PDF opening I only see gobbledygook -- don't know if it's just me (a link to another letter, written to the FSA, opens fine).

    The letter states:

    27 June 2012

    Dear Stephen

    The Treasury Committee is extremely concerned about the current crisis at RBS.

    Your first priority must be to resolve this crisis, caused by the failure of your computer systems. We would appreciate a report on how close you are to achieving this, both in the UK and for your operations in Ireland. We would like this by the end of the week.

    We would be grateful for a more detailed response, preferably by the end of next week (unless you are still fire fighting), in answer to the following questions:-
    • What caused this problem?
    • What implications has it had for your operations?
    • How many, and what proportion, of your customers have been affected (by brand and type of customer)?
    • What weaknesses does this reveal about your capacity to identify risks and construct contingency plans?
    • What initial assessment have you made about the quality and the apparent shortcomings of the bank's response?
    • What assessment have you made of the enduring risk to your computer systems?
    • Have staff savings or outsourcing, of your IT or other functions, contributed to RBS's difficulties?
    • What effect has this had on the Government Banking Service system for which you and Citigroup are responsible?
    • What plans have you put in place for compensation a) to your customers, b) to others affected?
    • What criteria will be used to access compensation?
    • What have you done to ensure that credit scores of your customers are not adversely affected as a result of your problems?
    • What affect has this crisis had on the level of customer switching?

    I will also be writing to the FSA and will send you a copy.

    I will be placing this letter, and your response, in the public domain.

    ANDREW TYRIE MP
    CHAIRMAN OF THE TREASURY COMMITTEE
  • stormymonday
    stormymonday Posts: 9 Forumite
    edited 30 June 2012 at 6:37AM
    I am still struggling to understand how RBS\Natwest\Ulster Bank Batch processing staff could have lost access to its 'record of transactions'

    The banks database itself should keep a history of all accounts transactions.

    The databases internal logs would have before and after images of all inserted, updated or deleted records.

    Properly written batch programs should also have all have inbuilt processing history reports, log displays of counts of records read, updated inserted and deleted, discard files to pick up rejected inputs, commit points details written to output , restart records for use in case of processing failure, formatted dumps from program ABENDS etc

    Is Stephen Hester seriously suggesting that his IT department has lost access to all of this information ?
  • scattykat
    scattykat Posts: 93 Forumite
    1111 wrote: »
    Hi, anyone know if payments are still being cleared on a saturday?

    I've had a dd go out today and money go in today
  • runninglea
    runninglea Posts: 907
    First Anniversary Combo Breaker
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    my cheques have gone in from last monday as have the business cheques.

    That is a relief

    All dd have been took so needed the cheques to clear to pay the dd

    Hope other people get some luck today and actually receive their monies before all the monthly dd get taken.

    This is the weekend when most dd will go out and when we need are cleared funds actually in our accounts
    Year 2019 (1,700/£17000mortgage repayment)Overall mortgage (71,400/165568) (44
    .1%) (42/100) payments made. Total paid 2019 year £1,700

    Total paid 2017 year £15,300Total paid 2018 year £13,600
  • paul_h
    paul_h Posts: 1,072
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    After a few days of things looking reasonable, I have a new problem... and I'm starting to get a bit twitchy again.

    I'm now waiting for a rather large business cheque which is overdue. However, the company concerned also banks with NatWest and is unable to issue the cheque due to the failure of internal money transfers.

    They can't even give an estimate when the cheque may be issued, as NatWest is giving them no indication of when the missing money may appear.
  • huckster
    huckster Posts: 4,789
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    Well I suppose if they don't know their true financial position, then they can't issue large cheques.

    May be worth getting something in writing from this company, as to how they have been affected, why they can't issue the cheque and when they expect to be able to do so.

    If you want NatWest to be in a position to look any financial loss you have suffered as a result of their failures, then you will need to get some evidence together.
    The comments I post are personal opinion. Always refer to official information sources before relying on internet forums. If you have a problem with any organisation, enter into their official complaints process at the earliest opportunity, as sometimes complaints have to be started within a certain time frame.
  • I am afraid that Hester still appears to be speaking with a forked tongue. I have done a few mainframe software upgrades in my time and I can not see anyway that a third party batch scheduler upgrade alone no matter how bug ridden or ineptly implemented would deny an IT department access to the 'record of transactions' since that processing should be maintained by the company's own software, reading its own data files and written to its own output reports and logs. In order to lose that information someone in house or some program written in house must have deleted it. We are still not being told the full facts here. This is a complete IT Governance failure not just a software 'glitch' caused by an aborted upgrade.

    I heartily agree with all this. Having been in a similar environment it appears that the basic rule of ensuring you can get back to square one before you undertake any upgrades has been ignored.

    The notion that a piece of data(the schedule) a fundamental part of the banks daily business can be "just deleted" shows a total dereliction of duty and standards.

    Some very severe questions need to be asked about the bank not only in it's technical standards but also those allegely associated with risk management and business continuity.
  • paul_h
    paul_h Posts: 1,072
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    huckster wrote: »
    Well I suppose if they don't know their true financial position, then they can't issue large cheques.

    To be precise, they can't issue the cheque because they are having problems transferring funds into their settlement account - the money has been transferred, but has not reached the destination account. I am sure I'm not the only one in this position, the company concerned handles large numbers of similar transactions.
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