With many people
around the UK affected by the NatWest banking meltdown United Leeds Endeavours looks at what caused the problems and who was affected.
The IT meltdown
that occurred over the past week is believed to have started on Tuesday night
when NatWest decided to update a key piece of software which controls the
processing systems that deal with retail banking transactions. United Leeds Endeavours understands that this update deleted the schedule for customer’s
transactions and so since then the bank have been attempting to play catch up
with people’s transactions. This has meant that many people have experienced
problems receiving payments and whilst attempting to pay others. United Leeds Endeavours were horrified to hear stories from individuals and particularly
businesses who had been unable to pay employees and bills. Many people were
also affected by the IT glitch, with some being unable to access their funds
for the majority of the weekend. Those worst off were members of Ulster Bank
who are still experiencing problems a week on.
Richard Price, a
systems developer who has worked on banking systems like that of NatWest
explained, "Banking systems are like a huge game of Jenga, most transactions
are related and so everything needs to be processed in order.” This is what led
to such big problems for so many customers as the order was disrupted.
It has also been
reported that NatWest were unable to sort out the problems more quickly as
since 2012 the majority of their IT jobs have been outsourced India.
A spokesperson
from United Leeds Endeavours said that, “Although we’re pleased that NatWest
extended their hours of opening to help clear the backlog of problems, there
are still concerns about any after effects of the meltdown. We are glad
however, that NatWest have put in place certain measures to help their
customers.” These measures include the fact that interest on credit cards is to
be waived for one month and customers are able to withdraw £100 over their
limit while problems are still being corrected. Any overdraft activity
experienced by customers will also not be recorded on customer’s credit files.
NatWest have
also promised to implement strict quality assurance and user acceptance test
before updating in the future. United Leeds Endeavours hopes that other banks
will follow their example to prevent similar problems from occurring in future.
