Santander, Lloyds and TSB ‘have essentially the most unreliable on-line banking’

Net design and improvement consultants at Rouge Media examined information from the web site monitoring service for 18 UK banks and constructing societies providing present accounts.

Researchers discovered Santander clients confronted essentially the most problem accessing their accounts and utilizing banking providers in 2021. Downdetector formally recorded 64 totally different issues and outages final yr throughout Santander’s web site and app.

Santander additionally has the best variety of all-time consumer complaints (6,635) on the net monitoring platform – larger than some other UK financial institution or constructing society.

In August 2021, Santander introduced plans to shut 111 excessive avenue branches in response to the continued shift by clients in direction of cell and on-line banking, a long-term pattern which has been accelerated by the pandemic. The financial institution had points with its on-line banking in each Could 2021 and November 2021.

A Santander spokesperson stated: “The resilience of our providers is a high precedence for us and we’re making fixed enhancements to our methods to make sure we offer essentially the most dependable service as doable for our clients. Each time an issue arises, we maintain clients intently knowledgeable, present other ways to entry our services wherever doable and work with these impacted to make sure they aren’t neglected of pocket consequently.”

Lloyds Financial institution is available in shut second place within the examine, with 44 issues and outages logged for its web site and app final yr. Total, 3,920 consumer complaints had been left on Lloyd’s Downdetector profile from clients experiencing points. In June 2021 it introduced it was shutting 44 branches.

TSB was in third place within the examine, with Downdetector recording 38 confirmed outages or issues with its on-line banking providers in 2021. Its profile additionally has 4,120 user-generated complaints – the second highest of the 18 banks studied.

TSB disputed Rouge Media’s findings. It claims that showing on Downdetector is totally different to an precise outage the place clients are impacted due to a financial institution glitch. It stated that based on Monetary Conduct Authority (FCA) information, TSB is definitely mid desk for IT outages, ending twelfth highest for outages from September 2020 to October 2021. It stated that TSB solely had three outages recorded by the FCA in 2021, not 38.

Making up the remainder of the highest 5 most unreliable on-line banks was Halifax with 35 incidents recorded, and Barclays with 33 incidents.

The speed of financial institution department closures has been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic and falling footfall on excessive streets throughout the UK. In response to this pattern, the Monetary Conduct Authority (FCA) is contemplating new guidelines to cease banks from shutting excessive avenue branches to make sure customers and companies can nonetheless entry money.

On the different finish of the desk, Starling Financial institution ranked as essentially the most dependable on-line banking service in 2021, with Downdetector logging only one challenge final yr. It additionally has the fewest user-generated complaints left on its profile at simply 38.

Different challenger banks, Monzo and Smile, are additionally among the many most dependable as discovered by the examine, with solely three and two points respectively reported by Downdetector in 2021.

Andy Woods, director at Rouge Media, stated: “With our reliance on on-line banking providers rising yearly, it has been actually attention-grabbing to analyse which clients are experiencing essentially the most issues with their digital accounts.

“It’s clear that many main banks proceed to face outages and disruptions throughout their digital providers, and with a lot competitors out there from new online-only entrants, this might trigger annoyed clients to go elsewhere.”