Santander stopping alerts - why would they do that?

GeoffTF

uk1 said:

Maintaining a stable low usage system that in however a small way to help customers avoid financial surprise implies to me that the issue is instead that more effort should be expended in increasing rollout to more customers rather than making facile dumb excuses and cancelling it for those sensible enough to use it.

If the bank's customers were sensible, knowledgeable and rational, that would be a good approach. The problem is that most of them are not. If the bank says this is a great tool to limit the damage if someone breaks into your account, their reaction will be to throw their arms up in horror. What people can break into my account? Why don't you stop them? This is terrible. I am moving my account to a safer bank. It would be a hard sell.

uk1

GeoffTF said:

uk1 said:

Maintaining a stable low usage system that in however a small way to help customers avoid financial surprise implies to me that the issue is instead that more effort should be expended in increasing rollout to more customers rather than making facile dumb excuses and cancelling it for those sensible enough to use it.

If the bank's customers were sensible, knowledgeable and rational, that would be a good approach. The problem is that most of them are not. If the bank says this is a great tool to limit the damage if someone breaks into your account, their reaction will be to throw their arms up in horror. What people can break into my account? Why don't you stop them? This is terrible. I am moving my account to a safer bank. It would be a hard sell.

Customers do not know what features that are available that they do not know about but are instead informed and encouraged to use little-known safety features by those that do ie the bank.

Customers are repeatedly warned about being aware of scamming and fraud. 

boingy

uk1 said:

... and software is increasingly maintained and developed with an increasing use of AI.  

None of the "traditional" banks are using AI to maintain those old systems. They are using aging software engineers and out-sourcing the simpler stuff to places like India. I have a good friend who works in this area for Barclays. He'll be retiring in a few years and fears for the future of that system, because there are not many softies around who can maintain that stuff. If you know anything about software languages you'd be shocked at what some of their systems are still coded in - languages that have not been taught for 30 or 40 years but that still form the core of some banking systems.

Banking systems are a slow changing thing. Just look at Virgin who have tried and failed to merge the various banking systems that they bought (or that bought them). Nationwide will be continuing that particular challenge. 20+ years ago I played golf with a chap who was part of the techie team at Royal Bank of Scotland tasked with integrating the newly-acquired NatWest system into their own. They were shocked at the state of that system. He described it as much worse than their most pessimistic expectations.

So all those groovy apps and web pages are often sitting on top of a vehicle with a wooden chassis running on leaf-sprung solid tyres. The bonnet may even be held down with a leather strap. Don't have nightmares...   

GeoffTF

uk1 said:

GeoffTF said:

uk1 said:

Maintaining a stable low usage system that in however a small way to help customers avoid financial surprise implies to me that the issue is instead that more effort should be expended in increasing rollout to more customers rather than making facile dumb excuses and cancelling it for those sensible enough to use it.

If the bank's customers were sensible, knowledgeable and rational, that would be a good approach. The problem is that most of them are not. If the bank says this is a great tool to limit the damage if someone breaks into your account, their reaction will be to throw their arms up in horror. What people can break into my account? Why don't you stop them? This is terrible. I am moving my account to a safer bank. It would be a hard sell.

Customers do not know what features that are available that they do not know about but are instead informed and encouraged to use little-known safety features by those that do ie the bank.

Customers are repeatedly warned about being aware of scamming and fraud. 

That is true of course. I guess it is a question of how the message is put across. Unfortunately, Santander has made its mind up, and other banks seem to be going the same way.

uk1

boingy said:

uk1 said:

... and software is increasingly maintained and developed with an increasing use of AI.  

None of the "traditional" banks are using AI to maintain those old systems. They are using aging software engineers and out-sourcing the simpler stuff to places like India. I have a good friend who works in this area for Barclays. He'll be retiring in a few years and fears for the future of that system, because there are not many softies around who can maintain that stuff. If you know anything about software languages you'd be shocked at what some of their systems are still coded in - languages that have not been taught for 30 or 40 years but that still form the core of some banking systems.

Banking systems are a slow changing thing. Just look at Virgin who have tried and failed to merge the various banking systems that they bought (or that bought them). Nationwide will be continuing that particular challenge. 20+ years ago I played golf with a chap who was part of the techie team at Royal Bank of Scotland tasked with integrating the newly-acquired NatWest system into their own. They were shocked at the state of that system. He described it as much worse than their most pessimistic expectations.

So all those groovy apps and web pages are often sitting on top of a vehicle with a wooden chassis running on leaf-sprung solid tyres. The bonnet may even be held down with a leather strap. Don't have nightmares...   

Sad reading.  

I suspect that a major cause is the amount of resource required by manufacturers to keep the systems advancing.  When the market was owned by a single manufacturer the cost was spread across  all of the banks worldwide. A lot of money was made by all. But with fragmentation and choice of suppliers investment per customer thins.  Evidence of this is that systems seem so much more vulnerably to down-time than it used to be to be.  

I remember the government decided that ICL/Fujitsu was a British Company ignoring that they imported their hardware from Japan and were clueless at software whereas my company who had a reputation for being very expensive but very reliable manufactured all of their largest old-iron in Hampshire and their PC’s in Scotland!  

I am glad I’m out of touch.

GeoffTF

boingy said:

uk1 said:

... and software is increasingly maintained and developed with an increasing use of AI.  

None of the "traditional" banks are using AI to maintain those old systems. They are using aging software engineers and out-sourcing the simpler stuff to places like India. I have a good friend who works in this area for Barclays. He'll be retiring in a few years and fears for the future of that system, because there are not many softies around who can maintain that stuff. If you know anything about software languages you'd be shocked at what some of their systems are still coded in - languages that have not been taught for 30 or 40 years but that still form the core of some banking systems.

I used to go climbing with a guy who was in charge of IT security with one of the high street banks. Suffice it to say that he believed that the bank needed to invest a lot of money to improve the security, but the CEO was not interested.

uk1

GeoffTF said:

boingy said:

uk1 said:

... and software is increasingly maintained and developed with an increasing use of AI.  

None of the "traditional" banks are using AI to maintain those old systems. They are using aging software engineers and out-sourcing the simpler stuff to places like India. I have a good friend who works in this area for Barclays. He'll be retiring in a few years and fears for the future of that system, because there are not many softies around who can maintain that stuff. If you know anything about software languages you'd be shocked at what some of their systems are still coded in - languages that have not been taught for 30 or 40 years but that still form the core of some banking systems.

I used to go climbing with a guy who was in charge of IT security with one of the high street banks. Suffice it to say that he believed that the bank needed to invest a lot of money to improve the security, but the CEO was not interested.

That sounds extremely odd to me. 

username

boingy said:

uk1 said:

... and software is increasingly maintained and developed with an increasing use of AI.  

None of the "traditional" banks are using AI to maintain those old systems. They are using aging software engineers and out-sourcing the simpler stuff to places like India. I have a good friend who works in this area for Barclays. He'll be retiring in a few years and fears for the future of that system, because there are not many softies around who can maintain that stuff. If you know anything about software languages you'd be shocked at what some of their systems are still coded in - languages that have not been taught for 30 or 40 years but that still form the core of some banking systems.

Banking systems are a slow changing thing. Just look at Virgin who have tried and failed to merge the various banking systems that they bought (or that bought them). Nationwide will be continuing that particular challenge. 20+ years ago I played golf with a chap who was part of the techie team at Royal Bank of Scotland tasked with integrating the newly-acquired NatWest system into their own. They were shocked at the state of that system. He described it as much worse than their most pessimistic expectations.

So all those groovy apps and web pages are often sitting on top of a vehicle with a wooden chassis running on leaf-sprung solid tyres. The bonnet may even be held down with a leather strap. Don't have nightmares...   

I remember going into a Natwest branch years ago (probably more than 5 but less than 10 years) to apply for an overdraft and they were still using a "green screen" window on a PC to tap into the mainframe to do the hard work. 
The comment about the ageing software and outsourcing to offshore locations is very apt for this bank I have mentioned, as they had some troubles years ago when with overnight payments.

alanwsg

I just got an SMS telling me alerts will end on 12th May.
This is on a 123-lite account, so it's not just the edge accounts that's losing them.

GeoffTF

I also have a 123 Lite and have just received the bad news too. Why did they save us until last? Perhaps it is because we date back to a time when they were promoting alerts.