Bank outages, like the one at London-based Barclays last week, are a growing threat as more banks see downtime due to vendor disruption, legacy system failure and lack of operational resiliency.  

In fact, 53% of financial services companies report experiencing service disruptions at least weekly, according to The State of Resilience 2025 report conducted by fintech Cockroach Labs with Wakefield Research, which surveyed 1,000 senior cloud architects, engineering and technology executives. 

The following financial institutions have recently reported outages: 

• On Feb. 3, Lloyds Bank clients took to Downdetector to report service issues; 

• On Jan. 31 Barclays reported technical disruptions; 

• On Jan. 16, Capital One experienced an outage due to a power failure at third-party vendor FIS; 

• In October, Bank of America clients reported outages of online and mobile banking services; and 

• In August, British challenger bank Monzo experienced an outage that disrupted card payments and outbound bank transfers.  

Barclays’ recent “technical issue” affected payments and transactions starting Jan. 31 and lasting through the weekend, a Barclays spokesperson told Bank Automation News on Feb. 3. 

The outage now “has been resolved and delayed payments processed. … We are working on bringing balances up to date for some of our customers and addressing any outstanding issues,” they said.  

A growing number of outages, especially those lasting two or three days like at Barclays, “speaks to antiquated systems,” Spencer Kimball, chief executive at New York-based fintech Cockroach Labs, told BAN. If a bank has a modern system, it can be restarted much faster and “doesn’t take two or three days,” he said. 

All banks should have a tech modernization strategy, Kimball said, noting that banks should take into account: 

• The most acute pain point and update the oldest system first; 

• Distributed infrastructure; and 

• Data replication. 

Regulators on watch

As outages dominate headlines, they are catching the eye of regulators.  

The European Union enacted the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) on Jan. 17, in an effort to strengthen the IT security of banks, insurance companies and investment firms, according to European Supervisory Authorities (ESA).  

The act is “providing quite a bit of impetus” for FIs to begin the modernization process, Kimball said.  

Madelein van der Hout, senior analyst at Forrester, agrees.  

“DORA provides the framework to ensure that financial entities have robust measures to withstand and recover from disruptions,” she told BAN. “By addressing vulnerabilities in this highly digitized ecosystem, DORA not only protects financial institutions but also safeguards the stability and well-being of the European society as a whole.” 

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