Singapore bank DBS suffers two-day tech outage, says deposits safe

SINGAPORE, Nov 24 (Reuters) – DBS Group Holdings Ltd (DBSM.SI), Southeast Asia’s largest bank, assured customers on Wednesday that their deposits and monies were safe as its online banking services faced disruption for the second consecutive day.

The disruption, including to its payments app, is the biggest suffered by Singapore’s DBS since a major glitch in 2010 left customers unable to withdraw cash from ATMs for hours. That resulted in the bank facing central bank supervisory action.

The latest disruption drew the ire of customers just hours after the bank announced a fix after the first day of outage.

“Yesterday, we identified a problem with our access control servers and this is why many of you have been unable to log in,” Shee Tse Koon, Singapore country head of DBS, said in a video message on Facebook.

He said DBS and its third-party engineering providers had fixed the issue and services were restored just after midnight but the problem recurred on Wednesday morning.

“I want to assure you that your deposits and monies are safe,” said Shee, adding customers could use the bank’s branches and phone banking services.

DBS operates in places including Indonesia, India and Hong Kong, but its biggest retail and wealth management market is at home in Singapore, where it is the market leader in retail banking.

The bank’s Facebook post attracted more than 2,500 comments, with users saying they were unable to log onto their digital bank accounts, while some asked for compensation.

“A component of the banking infrastructure can bring the entire service down for more than 24 hrs and counting,” user Tan Kim Lam said. “A bit unacceptable in current day expectations and standards.”

Another said it was time to move to other banks.

“The downtime is too long. Disappointed. Time to switch Bank. Am expecting DBS to do better than this,” said user Samson Joseph.Reporting by Anshuman Daga and Aradhana Aravindan; Additional reporting by Chen Lin; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Mark Potter

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This article was originally published by Reuters.