The UK has launched an investigation into the recent incidents of multiple system failures and outages across various banks in the country.
The inquiry will be led by the Treasury Committee composed of a team of British lawmakers.
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The move comes at a time when most of the banks in the UK are reducing their brick-and-mortar presence with several bank prioritising digital banking.
The committee will investigate the causes of these incidents as well as assess if the banking regulators can hold the financial institutions accountable for such IT failures.
Treasury Committee chairperson was quoted by the Reuters as saying: “Measly apologies and hollow words from financial services institutions will not suffice when consumers aren’t able to access their own money and face delays in paying bills.”
The committee is also planning to hire a specialist advisor to support the investigation.
Once the investigation is complete, the committee may recommend new measures on bank IT failures to the government including tougher regulations or penalties.
Bank IT failures: Background
In the last one year, several banks faced IT meltdowns which denied their customers access online transactions. The list of banks includes Equifax, Barclays, Cashplus, RBS and TSB.
TSB witnessed multiple outages of its banking services in one year following a botched upgrade. Its mulitple IT meltdowns compelled its CEO Paul Pester to step down.
Earlier this month, Barclays’ online banking went down following a technical glitch. The issue left several of its customers without access to their online accounts.
