Building society hit by online blockage

THE UK’s biggest building society was yesterday hit by an IT failure that blocked online customers from their accounts or wrongly told them they had no funds.

The problems affected Nationwide customers logging in to see current and savings account balances from about 8am, and lasted for about an hour.

Nationwide – whose advertising slogan is “On your side” – said the hitch was quickly fixed and apologised for any inconvenience.

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Annoyed customers pointed out that many people need to check salary arrivals at about this time each month.

On the internet, Nationwide said: “Some customers were unable to access accounts this AM due to a technical fault.

“This has been fixed & we apologise for any inconvenience.”

A spokesman could not say how many customers were affected but added that it was a relatively few.

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On Wednesday, the building society reported a 79 per cent week-on-week increase in people switching current accounts to such institutions following the introduction of an industry-wide guarantee to take the hassle out of account moving.

Nationwide said the recent jump followed a strong period of growth in its market share of current accounts – coinciding with major big bank scandals.

The society suffered a similar technical problem in April, when customers were locked out of online accounts. Last year, nearly three-quarters of a million Nationwide customers had debit card payments taken from their accounts twice. These mistakes were later corrected.

Lloyds Banking Group also had technical problems earlier this month – embarrassingly on the first day its new TSB branches were unveiled on high streets around the country.