Attention entrepreneurs: there is a real opportunity, at least in the UK, for a bank built the right way from the ground up. I'm talking about contemporary systems, real product ownership in the technology group where IT isn't just an outsourced cost, automated testing and continuous integration in the systems. Most of the efforts at 'new banks' in the UK have been built on the foundations of ancient, creaking mainframe systems. There is a lot of important logic in those legacy systems for sure, but I think progress could be made in building fresh solutions by starting at the relatively simple end of things e.g. customer setup, identity verification and basic savings accounts. Could built out from there to offer more complex products. The upsides of a fresh approach: lower maintenance costs, higher reliability, more operations can be carried out in realtime etc.
RBS IT cockup: This sort of thing can destroy a bank, normally
61–70 of 71 posts
Re: RBS IT cockup: This sort of thing can destroy a bank, normally
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1 for First Direct, but don't take my word for it: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/compare-best-bank-a...
Ditto. I had actually decided to move away from Natwest before this outage - as part of RBS acquiring some bank branches from one of the other bankrupt banks, the EU competition authorities forced them to sell some of their accounts to Santander, and they thought it would be a good idea to sell half of my accounts (business and personal credit card) whilst retaining the other half (personal, savings and joint account…
Ditto the Ditto - but note that Note all Barclays account are available for feed into FreeAgent. My Business Account was not. Had a hilarious few days speaking to various Barclays people who didn't know the service existed, or that Barclays even had a Data Services division.
Re: RBS IT cockup: This sort of thing can destroy a bank, normally
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Co-Op? (Although rumour has it that they're going to completely replace their computer systems either this year or early next year so that might be a case of jumping from one basket case to another!) RBS appears to have fouled up the scheduling of their overnight batch run in a way that meant large tranches of transactions simply weren't going through the system. Fixing the problem has taken days (which may be do…
I can't use the Co-op. They won't let me have an account because I apparently have a bad credit rating. (The real reason, I expect, is because I have no credit rating as I've never applied for a credit card or loan, or been late on a bill.) They're probably overdue a computer system overhaul as they've recently taken over several other banks and building societies, notably the Britannia where I had a few friends work…
Credit rating has never worked that way in the UK afaik. I have never had a credit card, or a loan or an overdraft (or a mortgage, or savings account). I have been late on bills and had warnings sent out yet have a perfect credit score (had to be checked recently for pre-mortgage application checks).
Re: RBS IT cockup: This sort of thing can destroy a bank, normally
#64Some more information about the tech behind the failings here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/25/rbs_natwest_what_wen... TLDR: Looks like a failure in their CA-7 batch processing systems, which compounded so they weren't able to back out. Lots of the experts in RBS's implementation of CA-7 have been made redundant, and been replaced with offshore-expertise I'm not going to question the proficiency of the offsho…
> there's great value with legacy systems in not getting rid of the people who have been working on them for the last 20 years, and know all the idiosyncrasies and foibles.
As someone who unfortunately has been in touch with CA-7 and who comes from a strong Unix/Linux background I can tell you I wouldn't want to touch that thing with a 30ft pole and on top of that these batches are usually extremely complicated in terms of dependencies and a ton of history and lessons-learned go into building those chains and the whole system is so complex yet so critical, we have 1 or 2 guys doing graveyard shifts for nothing but watching CA7 do its thing because if anything fails it could also shut down vital parts of the bank. (e.g. because literally some plain text files didn't get copied from A to B, in 2012...)
So not only is there possible great value in NOT getting rid of people who basically grew up with the system and know it inside out but when you do get rid of them it should be more than crystal clear to even the most disconnected manager that this is some really serious stuff you are outsourcing and just blindly trusting the friendly sales guy's promises is not going to cut it... it is almost like outsourcing a custom in-house software to an off-shore "expert" and hoping they can just instantly pick things up where your people left it off.
Now it is time to really take a very close look at those SLAs that the project team just wanted approved and signed asap....
Re: RBS IT cockup: This sort of thing can destroy a bank, normally
#65This has also been affecting customers of Ulster Bank in Ireland. The biggest problem appears to be catching up on the backlog of transactions: "The bank processed more than 110,000 transactions with a value of €500 million over the weekend" - http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0625/break... Does anyone else think that 110,000 transactions shouldn't take a whole weekend? Of course, we don't know exactl…
If it involves talking to other banks around the world then it seems reasonable.
What? It's not like they are sending the transactions by post anymore. This is a colossal screw up and 2 weeks is unacceptable. I wouldn't stand for 2 weeks of downtime on my shitty little hosted website, 2 weeks from a bank would send me to the moon.
Re: RBS IT cockup: This sort of thing can destroy a bank, normally
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
This thread is relevant to my interests: I'm totally going to switch when I can actually get at my cash. If the problem has been because of cuts to & outsourcing of IT staff, we can only assume there'll be more of them. So, here's a question: does anyone know what the frontline IT setups of other UK banks are like? There'd be no point in jumping to an outfit which has similarly weak infrastructure.
If you're going to switch, why wait? You can have more than one account at a time. Open the new one, and start using it. When you have access to your old account, write yourself a check and deposit it in the new account. It's that easy. You don't have to officially "close" the account and withdraw the cash. Once your balance is zero in the old account, give them a call and confirm that you want it closed, but at leas…
Over here they tend to deliberately keep them open (and will encourage you to leave 5 pounds in there to do so), presumably to inflate their statistics.
Re: RBS IT cockup: This sort of thing can destroy a bank, normally
#67I have been affected by this over the past week or so. I've been on holiday, and came back to a house with no fresh food, and no working bank account to pay for any, so I've been eating processed shite out of the freezer like a student for four days, and it's making me feel a bit poorly, not to mention the freezer is starting to look a little bare. I haven't had breakfast for days, and I have about two meals left if…
I have been using hsbc for business banking and haven't had a complaint. You just need to warn them when you travel or they will block your card.
Agree - HSBC - good experience for me. I've been with HSBC UK for personal use for about five years. Their online banking is what I'd expect - allows for low-hassle international FX transfers, security seems solid, stuff works, no user interface horror. On the phone they're consistently helpful. Like the parent, they block my card the moment I do too many transactions with new overseas providers without warning them. But they sort it out quickly if you call and verify.
Re: RBS IT cockup: This sort of thing can destroy a bank, normally
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
IT is seen as an overhead, and as something that doesn't contribute directly to profitability. When compared to dealers, dealers bring in the profit, IT slurps it away.
Very true sadly. Don't see many outsourced HR and accounts sections though. Sad part is that when it goes wrong it does effect the balance sheet. Even sadder is how they internaly cost IT and do it wrong. Remove the IT and see how many people/time is needed to do the same job and that is the true cost/potentual impact of IT. Sadly though that is never done and only comes to light when things fail and then they blame…
Oh man. Please, please, please outsource HR. Preferably to Mars. Biggest waste of space in the whole company.
Re: RBS IT cockup: This sort of thing can destroy a bank, normally
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it involves talking to other banks around the world then it seems reasonable.
What? It's not like they are sending the transactions by post anymore. This is a colossal screw up and 2 weeks is unacceptable. I wouldn't stand for 2 weeks of downtime on my shitty little hosted website, 2 weeks from a bank would send me to the moon.
I'm saying 110,000 transactions could take all weekend if they're dealing with latency from a gazillion other banking system.
Re: RBS IT cockup: This sort of thing can destroy a bank, normally
#70I have been affected by this over the past week or so. I've been on holiday, and came back to a house with no fresh food, and no working bank account to pay for any, so I've been eating processed shite out of the freezer like a student for four days, and it's making me feel a bit poorly, not to mention the freezer is starting to look a little bare. I haven't had breakfast for days, and I have about two meals left if…
Can any British readers recommend any alternative banks? Fair enough, but this isn't endemic to RBS. It's like looking for a new neighborhood to move to if your cat gets run over.
It's not really like that at all. It's worthwhile having a backup account at an alternate bank (that's obviously not within the same banking group), for the same reason we make backups of our data -- things happen. It's nice to know there's a second debit card and a chunk of change in another account should anything happen.