Customers at Britain’s major banks and building societies suffered the equivalent of more than one month’s worth of IT failures in the last two years, MPs have said.
Enquiries by the House of Commons’ Treasury committee have found that nine of the top banks and building societies operating in the UK accumulated a total of at least 803 hours, the equivalent of more than 33 days, of unplanned tech and systems outages between January 2023 and February 2025.
That disruption was caused by 158 banking IT failure incidents over the two-year period, which affected millions of customers’ ability to access and use services.
This did not include the most recent major outage, last week, when customers of TSB, Nationwide, First Direct and Lloyds Banking Group – including its Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland brands – struggled to log into online bank accounts or suffering from payment delays.
Losing access to banking services on payday can be “a terrifying experience” for families and individuals living paycheck to paycheck, explained Dame Meg Hillier MP, chair of the Treasury select committee.
“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.
“The fact there has been enough outages to fill a whole month within the last two years shows customers’ frustrations are completely valid. The reality is that this data shows even the most successful banks and building societies hit technical glitches. What’s critical is they react swiftly and ensure customers are kept informed throughout.”
Barclays reported the most incidents, 33, which lasted 93 hours in total. It said it had paid out up to £4.99m compensation.
That, though, did not include Barclays’ outage at the end of January and the start of February this year, during which 56% of online payments failed due to “severe degradation” of its mainframe processing performance. It expects to pay a total of between £5m and £7.5m in compensation to customers for “inconvenience or distress”.
Among other banks, NatWest racked up the most time lost to outages, 194 hours, through just 13 incidents, for which it paid out £348,000. HSBC paid out £232,697 to its customers after 32 incidents led to 176 hours of disruption.
