what is happening at the banks?

pqrdef

agrinnall wrote: »

The RBSG spokeswoman I heard at lunchtime said the root cause was a software change that failed

That figures. This kind of thing will become more common, because the banks' software systems are a hopeless unmaintainable mess by now.

The answer would be to start again with new banks. The Tesco experience doesn't bode well, but having got through the teething nightmare they should be in a better state for going forward. Bet they're glad they're not still using RBS.

callum9999

No it doesn't make sense at all that the bank got hacked, it's merely a blind guess. Other than there being problems, what specifically shows that it has been hacked and the bank are creating a conspiracy to cover it up?

Ditto, other issues at other banks are not remotely related to this. There are hundreds of hiccups all the time. If you happen to get one with Nationwide/Halifax/Santander etc. it's merely a coincidence it's happening on the same day.

Gentoo365

It is very unlikely that the banks have been hacked.

I was in a head office of a bank today (not RBS Group, cannot say who) and there would have been people stressing out. It was calm.

There are a few ways that other banks could be impacted though:

1) Any bank that should have received payments from RBS, or sent payments to them would probably be dealing with queries.

2) Any small bank/building society that uses Natwests payment systems may be affected (not sure if there are any actually, HSBC and Barclays seem to do most of the outsourced payment systems)

3) All banks will probably have an increase in people checking balances for expected payments

4) If RBS/Natwest are re-running all their payments files then there may be an increase in transactions happening in the system as a whole. In theory this could slow it down a bit.

5) More unpaid/bounced payments being processed in all banks.

Note that as other banks will be affected the FSA (and the BoE) will probably be involved in some way, I hope that in time the details will be reported on, so that other banks can also learn from the issue.

This is another reason why it is better to have a large amount of medium/small banks rather than a small amount of massive ones.

richardruff

I would say that if you bank with another bank (such as Halifax or Nationwide) if you haven't received a payment then the likelihood is it normally comes FROM a Natwest/RBS/Ulster account. Employers probably simply won't know whether anything is any different, I expect the payroll departments of many companies actually probably don't know who they bank with. It's usually all automated with BACS files.

On a more interesting note, another part of the RBS group is Coutts, the private banking group, who HM the Queen banks with.

I bet the poo will be hitting the fan when bailiffs turn up at Buckingham palace for her bounced direct debits!

:eek:

bilbo51

NatWest online banking completely unavailable this morning...

mardatha

RBS telephone banking says go into your branch. Will be queues around the block tomorrow.

MoneySaverLog

richardruff wrote: »

On a more interesting note, another part of the RBS group is Coutts, the private banking group, who HM the Queen banks with.

I bet the poo will be hitting the fan when bailiffs turn up at Buckingham palace for her bounced direct debits!

:eek:

Don't believe Coutts are affected by this, certainly nothing on their website about this. I suspect if you can bank with them then the default option would be to pay the DD, where us normal folk have to be assessed before they make payment.

jen245

bilbo51 wrote: »

NatWest online banking completely unavailable this morning...

Its working fine for me for the moment, ive just transferred some money between my accounts, which i wasnt able to do yesterday