Customers of Britain's leading banks and building societies have endured more than a month's worth of IT failures over the past two years. From January 2023 to February 2025, these institutions experienced the equivalent of 33 days of unplanned technical and systems outages, amounting to at least 803 hours of disruption. This series of incidents has affected millions of customers, disrupting their ability to access and utilize essential banking services.
Over this period, there were 158 banking IT failure incidents. These disruptions have caused significant inconvenience, especially for individuals and families living paycheck to paycheck. Losing access to banking services on payday can be particularly distressing, creating "a terrifying experience" for those affected.
The Treasury select committee intervened, paying out up to £4.99 million in compensation to soften the blow of these outages. Among the banks, NatWest faced the most significant impact, with 194 hours lost due to 13 incidents. The bank compensated its customers with £348,000. HSBC followed closely, compensating £232,697 after 32 incidents resulted in 176 hours of disruption. In terms of frequency, Barclays reported the most incidents—33 in total—lasting a combined 93 hours.
"Even when rectified relatively quickly, it can cause real panic, which is why we wanted to get a proper understanding of why unplanned banking outages happen and how banks and building societies respond."
— Dame Meg Hillier MP
One of the critical failures was attributed to "severe degradation" of mainframe processing performance, leading to a reported 56% failure rate in online payments. The most recent major outage occurred last week, impacting customers of TSB, Nationwide, First Direct, and Lloyds Banking Group. These customers faced payment delays, further exacerbating their frustrations. While Barclays issued compensation for this outage, the exact figures remain undisclosed.