RBS' ATM "Glitch" Enters Fifth Day

[JohnQPublic]

As RBS' ATM "Glitch" Enters Fifth Day, The Bailed Out Bank Issues A Statement (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/rbs-atm-glitch-enters-fifth-day-bailed-out-bank-issues-statement) http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-5.jpg (http://www.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden)

Submitted by Tyler Durden (http://www.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden) on 06/23/2012 13:14 -0400


Over the past week, various entities controlled by bailed out UK-bank RBS, focusing primarily on NatWest, have seen clients unable to access virtually any of their funds, perform any financial transactions, or even get an accurate reading of their assets. The official reason: "system outage"... yet as the outage drags on inexplicably for the 5th consecutive day, the anger grows, as does speculation that there may be more sinister reasons involved for the cash hold up than a mere computer bug...

[osoab]

There is a lot of good commentary at the link. What I got from the comments is that the RBS system is from the late 60's to mid 70's. They dumped all of their inhouse IT guys for contract Indians when RBS was bailed out. This seems like the more likely cause.

Could be a test for "bank holidays" too.




Sat, 06/23/2012 - 14:33 | 2554137 (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/rbs-atm-glitch-enters-fifth-day-bailed-out-bank-issues-statement#comment-2554137)


canardo (http://www.zerohedge.com/users/canardo) http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-94284.jpg (http://www.zerohedge.com/users/canardo)According to an IT-related website, this could be an unintended consequence of offshoring/outsourcing. Apparently a couple of months ago they fired the last hundreds of people with decades worth of mainframe experience who had to hand over to some Indians and now some change blew up in their faces and they're figuring out how to fix it. Meanwhile, a backlog which has to be processed is building up and the snapshots they use for web activities are stale, a huge mess.








Sat, 06/23/2012 - 15:41 | 2554321 (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/rbs-atm-glitch-enters-fifth-day-bailed-out-bank-issues-statement#comment-2554321)

Tinky (http://www.zerohedge.com/users/tinky)

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-93320.jpg (http://www.zerohedge.com/users/tinky)


From another forum:

Unless it has changed drastically, IIRC RBS (and Natwest, they migrated Natwest customers to the RBS system after the takeover) update main customer accounts in batch (on an IBM mainframe, natch.) overnight via a number of "feeder systems" (BACS, Accounting Interface ,etc.) through a number of "streams" through their main account update system (can't remember the exact name it had, Sceptre? - something like that) which cover a range of branches. These originally reflected the distance of the branch from Edinburgh, so stream 'A' was branches in the far distant north and run first, allowing the van with the printouts to leave earliest as it had the furthest to go. Seem to recall that Natwest started at stream 'L'.

The actual definitive customer account updates were carried out by a number of programs written in assembly language dating back to about 1969-70, and updated since then. These were also choc-full of obscure business rules ("magic" cheque numbers triggered specific processing) and I do not believe anyone there really knew how it all worked anymore, even back in 2001. I remember sitting in a meeting discussing how the charge for using an ATM which charged for withdrawals could be added as a separate item to a customer statement and waving a couple of pages of printouts of the source of one of them. The universal reaction was "wow, can you actually read that?". I can't see them having mucked about with that one too much, since good assembler people are like hen's teeth and it was decidedly non-trivial to make any changes to it, but the accounting rules did change frequently in the feeder systems. My bet is that some change has resulted in discrepancies in the eventual output from these systems, and a combination of retirement and redundancies has left them with very few people who know how it is all supposed to work, and therefore identify the cause of the error and fix it. Or they might have just blown the size limit on one of the output files from the various feeder systems (VSAM IIRC, limit was 4GB, unless they moved to the extended types), or possibly the FICON cable just dropped out of the back of whatever device some of the disk volumes live on.

Anyway, very complex stuff which all has to just work together. Of course, the moral is, complex mainframe systems require staff with the skills, and in this case, the specific system knowledge to keep things smooth. The fewer of these you have, the more difficult it is to recover from problems like this.


My $0.02. Perhaps someone with more recent knowledge will care to rebut?

[osoab]

From another board.

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/2/2012/06/22/rbs_natwest_outage_fourth_day/


Posted Friday 22nd June 2012 11:48 GMT (http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/1451001)

Ye Gads (http://forums.theregister.co.uk/user/53710/)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/alert_48.png
On the plus-side, all RBS Group employees are forced to have an RBS/Natwest account into which their salary will be paid. This happens around the 24th of each month.
Yep, you guessed it: RBS and Natwest probably won't be able to pay their staff until they fix the problem so they will be feeling their customers pain.




So who will still be working today?

[Glass]

I concur with Tinky. I've seen several big companies go broke under circumstances like that.

[freespirit]

i smell class action suits...

[Twisted Titan]

The bank pulled a bank holiday on themselves....the irony is just too rich hear

[osoab]

i smell class action suits...


They need their bank accounts back before lawyers can be hired. :D

[freespirit]

They need their bank accounts back before lawyers can be hired. :D


i have no doubt there is a pack of lawyers just itching to take this on for payment on the win. never let a good crisis go to waste, right...that's what contracts are for...

now the deposit insurance companies are going to up rates (lawsuit or no) because it "could happen again", then the banks are going to increase fees to help offset the costs, ad infinitum...

no matter what, the people are fucked. proper fucked.

[Glass]

All major banks in australia have had meltdowns in their systems over the last 3 years. They seem to be about 6 months apart. Can last for 48 hours to 1 week. I think it is cash flow issues.

I had a friend who had all their retirement funds in blackrock(?). I told them to get it all out but not to put it in RBS. Well they got their money out of there. Luckily the govt backstopped RBS.......