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The U. S. banking subsidiary of HSBC Holdings Plc has been struggling to catch up since Sunday, when its core banking system crashed, hindering the ability of customers to access their accounts and money.
Bank spokeswoman Linda Recupero reiterated that "most all of the impacted systems are now up and running" and stressed that customers' money has "always remained secure." But she said the bank is "still working through the remaining recovery efforts."
As a result, customer accounts in many cases are still not up to date because of the sheer volume of transactions the bank handles each day and has to catch up on.
That has left bank customers and employees uncertain of how much money is in accounts, so customers are having a hard time withdrawing large amounts of money or cashing large checks. And they can't figure out which deposits or checks have cleared, causing worry about whether bills are being paid or accounts are being overdrawn.
"HSBC has an excellent reputation, particularly being the global bank that they are," said James Van Dyke, founder and president of Javelin Strategy and Research in Pleasanton, Calif. "For them, uptime is everything, and they don't have a history of unreliability. This is fairly unprecedented for them."
Most customers interviewed by The Buffalo News outside a downtown branch Wednesday afternoon said they hadn't been affected or didn't even know about what had happened. That wasn't the case for those who were counting on deposits or checks clearing, or who check their balances regularly.
Katie Diebold, a 23-year-old Buffalo resident, is fretting about "a couple of checks I wrote that haven't shown up." She sent them last week and expected them to have been cashed by now, but she's not sure. "It affects me when I'm trying to check a balance and see how many checks have gone through or not," she said.
One of them is of particular concern because it's a student loan payment. "That worries me," she said. "If they have some kind of problem, I'm worried about whether I'll be billed a late fee or not."
Recupero would not speculate about whether there could be any problems with automatic debits or other checks not being paid from HSBC accounts to cover customers' other bills. She said customers should "go speak to their relationship manager or their branch manager if they're concerned about anything."
But she did say that customers shouldn't incur overdraft fees from HSBC and said the bank is "dealing with customers individually" if they were impacted and "ensure they are not unfairly charged as a result of this issue."
Bank officials have issued apologies to customers, including one by e-mail from Executive Vice President Kevin Martin to the HSBC Direct online banking population Wednesday morning. But customers are still angry, citing the inconsistent and inaccurate excuses they say they're getting from customer service personnel in particular, who may not really know what's going on.
"The messages given out over the Internet and through the call center by HSBC were nothing less than scandalous," said Edward Aquilino, 61, of Newburgh, near Poughkeepsie, in an e-mail. He said call center employees told him Tuesday that the problem was due to "maintenance" on the mainframe and was assured that the posting of credits would not be delayed.
"Someone should really hold the management's feet to the fire not only for its incompetence, but for the false messaging given out. They have lost my trust forever," Aquilino said.
In the meantime, officials are still not sure what led to the weekend computer failure . "We're still going through the whole process, so I have no idea what was the root cause," Recupero said. "It'll take a long time to figure out, I'm sure."
But Van Dyke said this shouldn't have happened, given that core banking systems have been around for decades.
"When systems are not new, it's very unusual to have a crash," he said. "Heads will roll. Vendors will be called in and invited out. There will be a lot of changes."
jepstein@buffnews.com
To see more of The Buffalo News, N.Y., or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.buffalonews.com. Copyright (c) 2008, The Buffalo News, N.Y. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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