Grasping the Big Picture of the HSBC Outage

From PYMNTS.com

“Getting back to the grind after a few weeks of holiday fun and relaxation is tough for anyone. But for thousands of HSBC customers, the start of the new year was especially brutal as the bank’s online personal banking service was knocked offline amid technological glitches — a fiasco that lasted for two days and marked the second time in as many years that Europe’s largest bank found itself apologizing to customers for technological issues.”

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Regulators are scrutinizing HSBC over its huge banking glitch

From Business Insider –

“Regulators are scrutinising HSBC over the bank's two-day online banking outage that has prevented millions of customers from accessing their accounts.

A spokesperson from the Financial Conduct Authority told Business Insider:

“The FCA is in contact with HSBC regarding a recent IT issue. We will be working closely with the bank as it resolves the problem and to ensure there are steps in place to help consumers who are affected.”

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Bloomberg outage highlights another bank weakness

From Reuters –
“Bloomberg’s global outage on Friday highlights yet another banking sector weakness. The financial data network’s downtime may have been a problem only for the richest fraction of the top 1 percent. But it prompted enough worry for the Bank of England to remind banks that it’s there as a lender of last resort, raising questions about traders’ heavy reliance on a few fallible systems.

There’s a frivolous side to the woes of Bloomberg LP, the private company whose terminals not only provide financial information and analytics to many in the financial sector but also function as the trading world’s most entrenched social network. The Wall Street Journal noted that bankers suddenly had to use telephones in the absence of Bloomberg’s messaging system, making trading floors noisier than usual. And Twitter revealed that denizens of the City of London, in the time zone most affected, were flocking to the enclave’s pubs.”

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