On 10 February 2025, the House of Commons Treasury Committee published a letter it sent to CEOs at 9 banks and building societies, requesting information on the scale and impact of IT failures that have affected their businesses over the last 2 years.

The Bank of England has previously set out its view that, although one-off outages at a single firm are not necessarily a risk to the UK’s financial stability, IT failures which affect a systemically important firm or multiple organisations at the same time could be. 

In the letter, the Treasury Committee asks for information including:

• The number of instances and amount of time in hours each current account provider has suffered IT failures which prevented customers using their services. 
• The number of customers affected.
• How much each firm has paid out in compensation to those affected.
• The reason for each outage.

The CEOs of these firms have been asked to respond by 26 February 2025.