The Royal Bank of Scotland has experienced every banker’s nightmare – an information technology failure that disrupted payments for almost a week. The UK press was full of stories about customers’ bills not being paid, critical mortgage completions breaking down and even a story about one man who spent the weekend in prison because his bail payment was not received.
With bankers still regarded as public enemy number one following the crisis, the idea quickly developed that banks were spending millions on bonuses rather than fixing their IT and looking after their everyday customers. Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King called for an investigation into what went wrong and why it took so long to recover.
