MSE News: Nationwide customers hit by banking blunder

pqrdef

If the regulators want to make themselves useful, why don't they insist on some standards for the engineering of banking IT systems? There are clearly too many single points of failure.

Maybe the banks need to learn from the aerospace industry, which does better - so we like to think, anyway

dalesrider

pqrdef wrote: »

If the regulators want to make themselves useful, why don't they insist on some standards for the engineering of banking IT systems? There are clearly too many single points of failure.

Maybe the banks need to learn from the aerospace industry, which does better - so we like to think, anyway

You mean like the dreamliner :rotfl:

As far as computers go there is always a risk.

The real issue is that there are too many single systems linked (read cobbled) together to talk to each other.
Issue here is that each bank has its own internal systems, which have to interact with Visa, Mastercard and other payment systems.
Add in many internal systems are old.... Read hold so much data, that it is considered a risk to upgrade these systems. Never mind the cost of not only the software/hardware. But also the retraining of every member of staff to use these.

But come on MSE.... Blunder this reads as someone made a mistake...
Unlike Glitch which is just a system issue....

Its either one or the other.
But MSE seems to like to be in the DM mould of reporting...

Hominu

pqrdef wrote: »

If the regulators want to make themselves useful, why don't they insist on some standards for the engineering of banking IT systems? There are clearly too many single points of failure.

Its true, but if you want a bank that's rock solid and has multiple redundancy on every system, you'll be paying £25/month for a current account with them.

Think about it, they are very unlikely to reduce their bonuses and so the only other way of raising more cash for systems expansion is to charge customers, but then they will not be competitive and will lose customers.

Much easier to just go "Oh, my primary bank is down, I'll need to use my backup bank".

opinions4u

Losing online banking for a couple of hours a month?

It's hardly a disaster.

innovate

Hominu wrote: »

Its true, but if you want a bank that's rock solid and has multiple redundancy on every system, you'll be paying £25/month for a current account with them.

Even £25/mth wouldn't buy you protection from the occasional glitch.

Life does go on even if access to your Internet banking is down for a few hours.

Dezmondo

I agree with majority here, and am not worried or angered by not being able to access my account earlier today. I work in the IT department of a financial institution (not Nationwide), and understand that any IT system can have problems from time to time. I therefore don't expect to have access to my account services 100% of the time.

All I expect from them is:

1) If and when a glitch such as this occurs, that they do what they can to restore their systems to working order as soon as possible (which they did).

2) That they analyse the root cause(s) of the problem, and where possible and practicable prevent the issue from occurring again in the future.

patman99

So, for the first time in 10 years, Nationwide suffers a 2 hour outage on the online side of it's Banking services.
Big deal. I work for a large multinational multi-sector company & we switched over to SAP a year or so back & it normally needs a full server reboot every couple of months to sort-out the speed & access issues that crop up.

olly300

Dezmondo wrote: »

2) That they analyse the root cause(s) of the problem, and where possible and practicable prevent the issue from occurring again in the future.

That's hard for some banks when they have made redundant the IT staff who understood how the system was cobbled together to send the work abroad.

Then again getting those staff back at a minimum of £1000 per day as consultants is obviously cheaper and less risky....

pmduk

If a computer system has a hiccup, can anyone from MSE editorial explain how that translates into a banking blunder?

fiesta04

Maybe Martin has sold out to the tabloids????

Even more dramatic Headlines to come.

F4