Monday, November 29, 2010

End in sight for unpaid NAB customers

The National Australia Bank says work on restoring customer accounts should be complete by tomorrow.

This afternoon, the bank said work would continue into the night to rectify accounts after a corrupt computer file last Wednesday night left people without wages and payments unprocessed.

NAB says while the glitch that caused payments and transactions to be delayed has now been fixed, additional work on around 19,000 accounts where duplicate or multiple transactions have occurred still needs to be completed and will be done so overnight.

Spokesman George Wright says outstanding transactions are being processed in chronological order.

"A person might have had a payment coming in on Wednesday and there might have been something going out on Thursday," he said.

"So you can't really say it's fixed for this number of customers, it's not that number. But we're up to Friday, so we're working through Friday."

In some cases there have been multiple debits and credits, but the bank says it is aware of the problem and it will be fixed as soon as possible.

Mr Wright says customers who have been charged fees or interest because of the glitch will be reimbursed.

"For NAB customers who may have incurred a fee or interest charge from the bank as a result of these delays, we're putting in a process to identify that and rectify it and refund people," he said.

"And anyone who might have incurred a charge from another institution as a result of these delays, we would ask them to contact us. We don't want people to be out of pocket and we'll work with them to fix that up."

Consumer group Choice says the payments system used by the major banks needs to be scrutinised in the wake of the NAB incident.

Choice spokesman Christopher Zinn says the delays have dragged on for far too long and highlight the vulnerability of the system.

"If this really was just a corrupted file which has caused this much damage, this much distress, we think it's a good time to take a long, hard look at the payments system and see if it really is robust enough and efficient enough for what is something that is essential to our daily lives," he said.

Mr Zinn says the current system is preventing new players from entering the market.

"We've been in talks with those who would seek to enter the banking sector in Australia, with new, competitive and innovative products who feel the structure of the payments system, some of its archaic nature, actually makes it impossible for them.

"We think that is something which the regulators, such as the Reserve Bank and the Federal Government, need to look at."

Source http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/29/3079719.htm?section=justin

No comments:

Post a Comment