Over 803 hours of unplanned tech and system outages were reported over the last two years in the nine top UK banks and building societies, research from Britain’ s Treasury Committee has found. ith at least 158 banking IT failure incidents being

W reported between January

2023 and February 2025, this amounts to over 33 days of unplanned IT downtime, over a month in a two-year period where millions of customers where blocked from accessing their cash.

Among those banks hit were Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Nationwide, Santander, NatWest, Danske Bank, Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Bank, according to data gathered by Barclays. Barclays themselves reported 33 outages over the period with each glitch having severe impacts, their most recent resulting in the failure of 56 per cent of online payments and costing them up to 7.5 million

pounds in customer compensation. HSBC and Santander reported the second largest number of hits over the 24-month period, each reporting 32 glitches. Only a few weeks ago, HSBC faced a significant technical glitch during which more than 1,600 users reported issues with the HSBC website and mobile banking app, keeping customers offline and without access to their funds for hours until resolved.

Meg Hiller, Chair of Treasury Select Committee, commented:“ For families living pay-check to pay-check, losing access to banking services on payday can be a terrifying statement” but nonetheless felt‘ reassured’ banks were attempting to minimise their impact on customers where possible.

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