In recent months, the UK banking sector has faced significant operational challenges due to a series of IT outages. Between January 2023 and February 2025, nine major banks and building societies experienced at least 158 unplanned IT incidents, totaling over 803 hours of downtime—equivalent to more than 33 days.
But with so many outages… why haven’t banks prioritised the end to end mapping of their Services, supporting business processes and underpinning full supply chain yet? What is holding them back?
Barclays reported 33 outages, including a major three-day disruption starting January 31, 2025, which affected over half of its payments and coincided with critical periods like payday and tax deadlines. This incident alone is expected to result in compensation payments between £5 million and £7.5 million.
Similarly, other banks such as HSBC, Santander UK, Nationwide, NatWest, and Lloyds have also reported multiple outages, impacting millions of customers.
These disruptions have profound implications for customers, especially those living paycheck to paycheck. Losing access to banking services on payday can be a distressing experience, leading to financial uncertainty and hardship. As Meg Hillier, Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, emphasized, it’s crucial for banks to ensure adequate compensation for affected customers.
Beyond customer inconvenience, these outages expose deeper issues related to supply chain risks within the banking sector. Modern banks rely on a complex network of third-party providers for various services, from IT infrastructure to payment processing.
Effective supply chain mapping from service to Nth party supplier is foundational to operational resiliency. Banks must map their end-to-end services to their third-party supply chains to identify vulnerabilities and mitigate risks. This proactive approach not only safeguards against operational disruptions but also protects institutions from reputational damage and regulatory fines. For instance, Barclays’ recent outages have led to compensation payouts totalling up to £12.5 million, highlighting the financial repercussions of inadequate risk management.
To enhance operational resilience, banks should adopt several best practices:
- Supply Chain Visibility for Operational Resilience: True operational resilience goes beyond third-party risk—it requires a full understanding of the supply chain that underpins critical banking services. Without clear visibility, financial institutions are left exposed to unexpected disruptions.
- Identifying Hidden Vulnerabilities: Banks rely on complex networks of technology providers, cloud services, and infrastructure partners. A failure at any point—whether from a third, fourth, or even fifth party—can cascade into a major outage. Identifying these dependencies is key to ensuring continuous service availability.
- Managing Concentration Risk to Prevent Systemic Failures: Many financial institutions unknowingly depend on the same critical suppliers. If a single service provider supporting multiple banks fails, the impact can spread across the industry. Mapping these interdependencies allows institutions to take proactive steps to reduce risk exposure.
- Proactive Resilience Planning: Instead of reacting to outages, financial institutions need end-to-end visibility of their operational ecosystem to anticipate and mitigate risks before they disrupt essential services.
By implementing these strategies, banks can better navigate the complexities of their supply chains, ensuring continuity of services and maintaining customer trust.
TechPassport is the only product in the market to fully empower financial institutions by providing a comprehensive view of their supply chain and operational ecosystem, enabling them to strengthen resilience, minimize service disruptions, and protect customers from the fallout of IT failures.
So let’s make these outages and impact to people a thing of the past.
UK Banks Face Scrutiny Over IT Outages and Compensation
Britain’s top banks clocked up 33 days’ worth of IT glitches in two years
Barclays to pay out up to £7.5mn to customers after 3-day IT outage
Lloyds, Halifax and TSB among six banks hit by payday disruption
