Nine of the top banks and building societies operating in the UK accumulated at least 803 hours - the equivalent of more than 33 days - of tech outages in the last two years, new data published by the Treasury Committee shows.
The influential cross-party committee, which has been investigating the impact of bank IT failures, sourced the data from Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Nationwide, Santander, NatWest, Danske Bank, Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Bank.
At least 158 banking IT failure incidents affected millions of customers’ ability to access and use vital financial services between January 2023 and February 2025.
The data does not include the most recent outages affecting Barclays customers between 31 January - 2 February and various banks on 28 February, disruption which left many people distressed on payday.
During the three-day outage at Barclays, 56% of online payments failed due to ‘severe degradation’ of its mainframe processing performance. The bank confirms it expects to pay between £5 million and £7.5 million in compensation to customers for ‘inconvenience or distress’.
When taking into account all of the information shared by Barclays, this means the bank could pay out up to £12.5 million in compensation due to outages. The second highest amount paid out by a firm in the last two years is £350,000 by the Bank of Ireland.
Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, Dame Meg Hillier MP, says: "For families and individuals living paycheck to paycheck, losing access to banking services on payday can be a terrifying experience. 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. And we know some can go on for several days.
Common reasons given for the IT failures include problems with third-party suppliers, disruption caused by a change in systems and internal software malfunctions.
“The fact there has been enough outages to fill a whole month within the last two years shows customers’ frustrations are completely valid," says Hillier. "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."
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