FNB Online Banking back to normal, says CEO

[rpm]

FNB Online Banking back, says CEO

FNB Online Banking clients should not experience any more significant problems says CEO; explains what happened

 

[placebo]

Managed to log into our Corporate account 10 minutes ago.So perhaps Fnb has solved most of their problems

 

[LCBXX]

I must be honest it didn't impact me that much. I did 99% of my electronic banking before the 1st. Fortunately inContact SMS's stayed online.

 

[LazyLion]

Epic Fail! Pretty poor show for a major national bank. They should be embarrassed beyond measure.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

CEOs should leave technical statements to CTOs.

 

[Johand]

Well -- compare this to the massive MTN billing system fail (no communication, statements are still wrong after several months, call centre staff has no clue and rather blame the customer, noboby has any recollection about statements made by the MTN CTO etc) I can honestly say that FNB did very good in comparison.

They communicated on various levels. The communicated frequently. They did not blame their customers for the problem. They even put messages on their call centre intro.

Whilst the occurrence of problems like these should be avoided, sometimes something will happen and it really is how well a company responds to them that matters.

Where FNB could have done better is to provide clearer alternatives and compensation for affected users. I do hope that they waive any bank charges for users who had to use the branches instead of the internet.

The fact that the CEO made the statement is also a plus in my book. It conveys the message that this problem was escalated right to the top. Look at HelloPeter - there is almost no backlog on messages(again compare to MTN who simply started ignoring messages it didn't like).

I think the positive actions of FNB needs to be recognized - because other companies can learn from it.

 

[Luke7777]

I do hope that they waive any bank charges for users who had to use the branches instead of the internet.

Curious....how would they know this ?

 

[Lazy]

So her inititial statements were.....?

 

[Johand]

Curious....how would they know this ?

Easy - you would tell them to please waive bank charges on this and that day due to the fact that internet banking was down.

Banks are sometimes flexible regarding these type of things. E.g. I once had trouble getting a complete statement and had to try 4 different methods (bank teller, branch manager through archive, internet banking long term statement archive...) because they had system problems and I just told them to please waive the fees because of systems issues. And they did. Presto.

 

[Kkkurupt]

I couldnt even register for online banking. I will give it a try tonight.

 

[netpreneur]

But I still cannot use my bank card online

 

[Quasimodo]

I have been in IT for 25 years and I have never heard of an excuse like this before. Change management is critical to these types of systems, so it seems that their IT change systems are dysfunctional. System upgrades are done all the time by banks and insurance companies without this type of outage.

And as for her excuse about the database being overloaded - did they switch from Oracle or DB2 running on the mainframe to MS Access running on a 386 PC??? WTF!

 

[Johand]

I have been in IT for 25 years and I have never heard of an excuse like this before. Change management is critical to these types of systems, so it seems that their IT change systems are dysfunctional. System upgrades are done all the time by banks and insurance companies without this type of outage.

And as for her excuse about the database being overloaded - did they switch from Oracle or DB2 running on the mainframe to MS Access running on a 386 PC??? WTF!

I have been in IT at Financial Services companies for 5 years and I have heard much worse than this! Change management only goes so far - you will always be constrained by economics before you run out of stuff to do.

Besides - in terms of nature of this problem - it wasn't that major. The system kept running, and only a portion of users were impacted. The impact was not directly financial, rather access.

To overload a database like that is also pretty easy - they might have made changes the schema. On large databases that banks use - schema updates can take several days with degraded performance [e.g. I know of people who waited 17 hours inserting a column in a 160 million row table DB Oracle on Solaris, with fast Fiber Channel storage]. So it would also explain why stress testing missed this - they might have loaded the data after implementing the change in the test environment instead of having a large volume of static data before they tested the upgrade process. It also explains why a roll-back just wasn't this practical - if they rolled back they would have lost data (because the system was still working for SOME users). If they didn't roll back some users would not have access. It is a no-brainer - data-loss is much worse than access problems.

It was bad for FNB because it was so visible. But it wasn't the end of the world. I heard nobody complain about Kulula's systems, which went down on Monday. And I am amazed at how much press this gets compared to the MTN billing disaster which actually has direct financial impact which is with us for a couple of months already.

Besides - I know that somebody is going to get a nickname for this! Or at least a snappy introduction - Hi guys, this is John "Let's have some code behind the default value" O' Brian - he broke the internet in the late noughties.

P.S. I haven't worked with or FNB before! And I don't have a nickname like that yet (although I am partially responsible for some "incidents").

 

[RBJacobs]

FNB CEO Michael Jordaan Interview on 702 - Highlights

FNB CEO Michael Jordaan apologised to FNB Customers for letting them down while Online Banking was not available for the last couple of days. The problem is now resolved and FNB Online Banking will be fully operational by tomorrow morning. He also mentioned that consumer banking is already fully operational and that Business Banking will be fully functional shortly.

To discuss concerns on losses or costs incured during this period, FNB suggests customers should call their relationship managers or the FNB Online Call Centre on 0860 11 22 44.

 

[Creag]

FNB CEO Michael Jordaan Interview on 702 - Highlights

FNB CEO Michael Jordaan apologised to FNB Customers for letting them down while Online Banking was not available for the last couple of days. The problem is now resolved and FNB Online Banking will be fully operational by tomorrow morning. He also mentioned that consumer banking is already fully operational and that Business Banking will be fully functional shortly.

To discuss concerns on losses or costs incured during this period, FNB suggests customers should call their relationship managers or the FNB Online Call Centre on 0860 11 22 44.

I'm waiting for my e-mail

 

[TechMall]

It pays for companies to follow best practices such as ITIL. If the Change Management processed was followed in the first place, it never would have come down to this.

There is no such thing as no "back-out" process. If someone would like to implement a Change with no back-out or contingency plan then chase him/her away.

 

[ThatOtherGuy]

I have been in IT for 25 years and I have never heard of an excuse like this before. Change management is critical to these types of systems, so it seems that their IT change systems are dysfunctional. System upgrades are done all the time by banks and insurance companies without this type of outage.

And as for her excuse about the database being overloaded - did they switch from Oracle or DB2 running on the mainframe to MS Access running on a 386 PC??? WTF!

I agree. Unless they changed the database or db mechanisms, it will not be database issues. This is just bad change request processes.

 

[skybound]

This is about the 3rd instance where upgrades have impacted on availability over the past few years.

With what is perceived as little or no change management and their inability to roll back when plans go pear shaped is unacceptable. I am concerned about what the state of their business continuity plans are, in the event of any disaster. (BCM/DRP)

Saying sorry each time does not cover the losses that corporates and individuals have suffered as a result of their poor performance.

As banking with them, now poses a risk to our businesses, we should be evaluating if we should be moving our accounts. The question is - how do the other banks stack up to FNB in the above areas of change control and BCM?

 

[LazyLion]

This is about the 3rd instance where upgrades have impacted on availability over the past few years.

With what is perceived as little or no change management and their inability to roll back when plans go pear shaped is unacceptable. It makes me worry about what the state of their business continuity plans are in the event of any disaster. (BCM/DRP)

Saying sorry each time does not cover the losses that corporates and individuals have suffered as a result of their poor performance.

As banking with them, now poses a risk to our businesses, we should be evaluating if we should be moving our accounts. The question is - how do the other banks stack up to FNB in the above areas or change control and BCM?

short answer... the all suck... really bad.

Actually, while that is true... I must say they are better than most banks I have seen in the USA in terms of efficiency... more expensive, but more efficient.

 

[Turtle]

Am definitely not making excuses for them, FNB's online banking leaves a lot to be desired in general, but I'm guessing they just struggle as much as every other employer to find decent skilled IT people in this country ... I think everyone's just feeling the strain. I've noticed lots of technical problems with Vodacom's systems lately (for example) and I was also wondering if it's a similar thing (or maybe the new CEO is just not that great). The tiny number of people who are really good are either overworked or emigrate, while the majority of our graduates suck (and no I don't even mean the AA ones, I mean the supposed 'best of the best' ones). And it's not getting better. Combine the increased emigration since last year's electricity and other problems with the increasingly horrible and lazy quality of our graduates and it adds up to a problem. I recently heard a statistic given by the dean of a major SAn university that the *top* 5% of graduates here are about the same level as the *average* university student in Singapore. I'm an IT manager and from what I've seen can definitely believe that. Guys here just don't seem to understand that you have to work really hard and hold yourself to high standards as found elsewhere.