FNB Online Banking back, says CEO
Numerous FNB Online banking clients had to contend with service unavailability since Sunday. Many of these FNB clients expressed their frustration online, questioning the bank’s technical expertise and reasons behind the prolonged online banking problems.
FNB Online Banking CEO Lee-Anne van Zyl told MyBroadband today that the problems started after a routine system upgrade on Sunday. According to Van Zyl the upgrade was put through rigorous testing before going live, and that no problems were anticipated.
The upgrade went smoothly, but when large numbers of FNB clients logged on to start using the system they realized that the database could not handle the load. This, Van Zyl said, occurred on Monday morning, but complaints about FNB’s online banking emerged online on Sunday already.
Van Zyl explained that the immediate solution was to limit the number of clients who could simultaneously use the system. She said that this ‘regulation’ was linked to the database load rather than a specific number of users since the activity and transactions done by online banking users differ in terms of load.
Questions have been raised as to why FNB did not roll back the changes after they realized that the upgrade caused problems, but Van Zyl said the problems were not related to functionality but were ‘technical’ in nature, which made a roll back near impossible. Van Zyl added that the substantial upgrades done on the database meant that a rollback was not feasible.
On Monday night the FNB technical team ‘worked through the night’ to resolve the problems, and on Tuesday morning FNB’s online services were restored in full to retail clients, FNB said. Access for business clients’ was however still regulated, something which continued until today.
Numerous business and retail clients were still complaining this morning about service unavailability, and Van Zyl said that this may be related to the high volumes of traffic experienced as a result of pent-up demand.
The FNB Online Banking CEO advised clients to call their support centre if they continue to experience problems.
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