An upgrade to a telephone banking system for business
customers caused some HSBC retail customers problems on Saturday
(24 February).
An HSBC spokesman said that some customers could not complete
some debit transactions. "The issue was caused when new coding was
put into the telephone banking service for business customers," he
said.
Retail customers were affected because their details
reside on the same database as business customers. "All
services use the same customer database, so if you have a failure
at one point it can bring down other points of the network," said
the spokesman.
He said the problems were intermittent on Saturday with some
failures in ATMs or retailer systems communicating with the
database.
The bank said that the system was up and running as normal by
early evening on Saturday.
This puts into perspective the challenges faced by banks as they
attempt to integrate customer details across their businesses on
fewer databases.
