On Wednesday, DBS Group Holdings Ltd, Southeast Asia’s largest bank, reassured clients that their balances and funds were safe, as its online banking services were disrupted for the second day in a row.
The outage, which also affected DBS’s payments app, is the bank’s worst since a huge failure in 2010 caused users to be unable to withdraw cash from ATMs for hours. As a result, the bank was subjected to central bank supervision.
Customers were outraged by the current outage, which came just hours after the bank announced a cure for the first day’s outage.
“We discovered a problem with our access control systems yesterday, which is why many of you have been unable to log in,” DBS Singapore country head Shee Tse Koon said in a video message on Facebook.
DBS and its third-party engineering partners repaired the problem, he added, and services were restored shortly after midnight, but the problem reappeared the next morning.
“I want to reassure you that your funds and savings are secure,” Shee added, adding that customers may use the bank’s branches and phone banking facilities.
DBS has operations in Indonesia, India, and Hong Kong, but its largest retail and wealth management market is in Singapore, where it is the retail banking market leader.
More than 2,500 people commented on the bank’s Facebook post, with some claiming they were unable to enter into their digital bank accounts and others requesting compensation.
“A component of the banking infrastructure can take down the entire service for more than 24 hours,” stated user Tan Kim Lam. “In today’s expectations and standards, it’s a little unacceptable.”
Another person suggested that it was time to switch banks.
“The downtime is excessive and disappointing. It’s time to change banks. DBS should do better than this, in my opinion, “Samson Joseph, a user, expressed his thoughts.
