UK banks publish IT failure figures for first time

Banks and building societies across the country have begun publishing the figures under a voluntary scheme administered by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The disclosures show that major banks in the UK typically suffer more than one incident per month.

Banks were told by the regulator to show evidence of the quality of the service they were providing, with the aim of helping customers to compare what banks were offering and to switch accounts.

Barclays reported the most problems, with 41 over the nine months between April and December 2018. Lloyds Bank suffered the second highest number of outages with 37, while other brands in the Lloyds Banking Group jointly had 31.

Santander reported 16, HSBC 13, while Nationwide had just five in that period. TSB reported just three, despite suffering a major IT failure as it sought to move customers to a new system for much of 2018.