Recent data released by the Treasury Committee indicates that nine of the leading banks and building societies in the UK have experienced a staggering total of at least 803 hours—equivalent to over 33 days—of technological outages over the past two years.
This influential cross-party committee, investigating the ramifications of IT failures in banking, compiled this data from prominent institutions including Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Nationwide, Santander, NatWest, Danske Bank, Bank of Ireland, and Allied Irish Bank. The findings reveal that a minimum of 158 incidents of banking IT failures significantly disrupted millions of customers’ access to essential financial services from January 2023 to February 2025.
Notably, this data does not include the recent outages that affected Barclays customers between January 31 and February 2 or the disruptions on February 28 involving other banks, which caused considerable distress during payday for many clients. During the three-day outage at Barclays, an alarming 56% of online payments failed due to significant degradation in their mainframe processing. The bank has indicated that it anticipates compensating customers between £5 million and £7.5 million for the inconveniences caused, potentially totaling up to £12.5 million when considering the full extent of outages. Comparatively, the Bank of Ireland has reported the second-highest payout in the last two years at £350,000.
Dame Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, commented on the distress caused by such outages, particularly for families and individuals living paycheck to paycheck. She emphasized that losing access to banking services, even temporarily, can induce panic and anxiety, underscoring the necessity for banks and building societies to understand and mitigate the causes of unplanned outages.
Common culprits cited for these IT failures include issues stemming from third-party vendors, disruptions related to system changes, and internal software bugs. Hillier remarked, “The fact that such a significant number of outages occurred within just two years validates customer frustrations. This data shows that even the most established banks can encounter technical difficulties. What is crucial is their prompt response and effective communication with customers throughout the process.”
The importance of responsive customer service in the face of technical difficulties is underscored by a recent tweet from Santander UK Help, acknowledging ongoing service issues and the bank’s commitment to resolving them as quickly as possible.