Bank Holidays - why does this affect your online account view

Ballard

skyranger wrote: »

True but then the same thing could be said for the banks and bankers - if they had just planned better but for some reason the excuse of "Oh it would cost 5 trillion to replace our systems when we should have been doing these upgrades and changes throughout the time" is acceptable but joe public saying similar is met with "Should have planned better then"

What upgrades would you say that the banks should have been implementing over the past 5 years?

skyranger

Not over the last 5 years but ever since banks went electronic.

Like with any company, unless you keep on top of your infrastructure, then it will always be patch up jobs and customer complaints

Ballard

skyranger wrote: »

Not over the last 5 years but ever since banks went electronic.

Like with any company, unless you keep on top of your infrastructure, then it will always be patch up jobs and customer complaints

Let's put it another way then. What aren't the banks able to do now that you feel that they should?

Edit: Banks have introduced (off the top of my head) electronic banking, faster payments, apps, BACS, Swift, direct debits, ATMs, debit cards, credit cards & using cards overseas so don't choose any of those items.

skyranger

Again, you're missing the point.

I was purely talking about the infrastructure. The introductions you mentioned are great but the reason for them is purely introduced for the banks benefit e.g. reduction in human resources, time, competition, speed of delivery - which all adds to the profits (direct costs). They are great and some of the things are really impressive that I find very useful.

I wasn't talking about these things.

I was talking about the infrastructure of the banks internal systems (an overhead). This indirect cost can't be passed onto the customer (us) so they always suffer more than a direct cost.

It's shortsighted for any business to ignore their indirect costs and in this case, the outdated bank systems that are ran in the background.

Without exposing security, there are many upgrades that should be performed to banks infrastructure including the bank holiday issue but because its a indirect cost, it will be put to the back compared to profit.

My point is that we all do it, so you might have a car that you know needs a new part, but you plod along thinking I'd rather spend the money on a night out or for my kids or whatever.

When the part fails, you have to pay a larger fee to get it fixed than you should have done originally. It isn't helpful, on this site, when people say "Should have planned better then", however that mentality seems to be ok to say to joe public but banks etc can get away with it it seems

Ballard

The banks have clearly updated their software over the years, as evidenced in the list that I provided earlier. The core systems will be drastically different to what they used 10 years ago even if it's the same suite. They are likely to have added the likes of front office packages which interface with the core system.

I'm also not sure how faster payments have benefited banks. Previously it would have been BACS or Chaps. Now virtually all payments are free for the majority of customers. Banks, in general, allow transfers at 3am on a Sunday. For nothing.

Don't get me wrong. Banks aren't perfect. They mess up sometimes. NatWest have had major problems with its systems a few times in recent years. PPI etc from all of the high street banks were completely out of order. These things are definitely worth getting worked up about but I disagree completely that they've sat on their laurels with regards to innovating their systems.