NatWest website back up after second day of IT outages
NatWest website goes down in a second day of IT outages affecting accident-prone RBS banking group
Customers of RBS and NatWest, have faced a second day of downtime following an outage yesterday that the banking group claimed to have fixed at around 6pm.
However, customers have today been shut out of the bank's website after online and mobile banking went down yesterday due to an IT glitch. While RBS Banking Group, which owns NatWest, claimed to have resolved yesterday's outage, NatWest's website went down late this morning, with services remaining down until around 5.50pm today.
NatWest has insisted that, unlike yesterday, online and mobile banking have remained accessible.
In addition, Bankline services used by business customers have also remained up - at a time of the month when many will have been doing their payrolls.
In addition to borking access to banking services, yesterday's outage also prevented customers and prospective customers from applying for credit cards or transferring money, and has affected businesses looking to pay wages via the NatWest Business Bankline service.
In a statement yesterday, the bank acknowledged the problems, adding that customers could still withdraw money via an ATM or conduct their business via phone banking.
"We are aware of the problem and are working hard to fix it. We are aware that customers are currently experiencing issues accessing our websites and online banking login pages. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.
"Customers can still access online banking via direct links, they can use their mobile app, ATMs, telephone banking, or visit their local branch."
RBS appears to suffer regular online and banking system problems.
This is backed up by a recent analysis by the BBC that indicated that NatWest and RBS had suffered the most IT outages in recent months - although Barclays appeared to be the least reliable over the past year.
Barclays reported 33 incidents in the 12 months to the end of June this year, according to the BBC, while NatWest had 25 and Lloyds Bank had 23.
More seriously, in September last year NatWest online, mobile and telephone banking customers were locked out of their accounts for much of the morning of Friday 21st September.
In 2016, payment problems led to an afternoon of embarrassment and frustration for customers of NatWest, RBS and Ulster Bank, while in 2015, it also suffered a major outage attributed to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
Back in 2012, the banking group was subject to a long-term payment glitch affecting 12 million customers of NatWest, Ulster Bank and RBS. Writing exclusively for Computing, a former RBS manager explained where the group's IT organisation may well have gone wrong.
That summer 2012 meltdown led to a £56 million fine from the Financial Conduct Authority.
However, NatWest will have to go a long way to beat TSB's meltdown last year, when it botched a banking platform migration, locking out millions of customers in the process. CEO Paul Pester was ousted in the aftermath of that disaster which led to months of outages and costs estimated at £330 million when it published its annual report in February 2019.