February 27th, 2009
IT failures roundup: Banks around the world!
Failures seem to come in waves, and today it’s banking. Think your bank’s systems are perfect? Don’t be so sure.
“System error” at UBS Japan causes erroneous $31 billion trade. From Finextra:
Swiss bank UBS has confirmed that a “system error” was responsible for the entry of an erroneous trade for three trillion yen at the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Tuesday.
UBS told the Bloomberg newswire that its Japanese unit mistakenly ordered $30.9 billion of Capcom Co. convertible bonds, 100,000 times more than it intended, because of an internal system error.
Allied Irish Bank incorrectly pulls cash from customer accounts. Again, Finextra has the story:
Allied Irish Bank (AIB) says some customers who withdrew money from cash machines on Tuesday had their accounts debited twice following a computer glitch.
A spokeswoman for the bank says a technical error resulted in electronic transfer files being sent twice.
Canadian RBC debit card network crashes. From the Welland Tribune:
A technology glitch at Canada’s largest bank disrupted debit and other transactions yesterday morning, forcing card holders to pay cash or use credit cards at gasoline stations, stores and other retail outlets across the country.
The glitch was traced to a network problem that occurred during a system upgrade. The company that processes the Interac debit card transactions for Royal Bank says the problem affected retail point-of-sale systems supplied by Royal Bank and RBC’s own automatic teller machines.
Australia’s Commonwealth Bank customer portal goes crashes. Australian IT has details:
A TECHNICAL glitch has crippled Commonwealth Bank’s online banking systems, locking out hundreds of thousands of customers from the website. The outage is the second glitch to affect the bank in less than two weeks. Since about 9 am, customers logging onto the CBA’s online banking portal, Netbank, have been met with an error screen explaining the site is temporarily unavailable.
Macedonia workers unpaid due to software bug. Only loosely related to banking, Southeast European Times has this story of software problems causing real world pain:
Anger and confusion surged in Macedonia this month as the botched introduction of Public Revenue Office (PRO) software for the “gross salary” system left thousands without pay for all of January. Among them were the two leading presidential candidates.
The government introduced the new system in an effort to improve transparency, believing it would force employers to pay their mandatory contributions to their workers’ pensions and health insurance, since those who failed to make those contributions and pay salaries by the 15th of the month would face fines as high as 2,000 euros and even the seizure of their businesses by the PRO.
Finger-pointing was widespread. The finance ministry blamed employers for submitting their January payroll estimates late. Numerous companies also failed to verify the compatibility of their accounting software with that of the PRO in time.
On the other hand, angry executives contended that the inflexible PRO software blocked entire companies’ payrolls if even one employee’s salary information was remiss.
[Several stories via Dennis Howlett. I'm always grateful for pointers to failures, so thank you, Dennis!!! Image from iStockphoto.]
Michael Krigsman is CEO of Asuret, Inc., a software and consulting company dedicated to reducing software implementation failures. Click here to discuss this post with him on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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