Given DBS’ popularity among Singaporeans, it’s no surprise that many were inconvenienced by the outage that struck the bank’s digital services in May.
Though DBS had shared earlier that the disruption was caused by a “systems issue”, more information has since surfaced.
Responding to a parliamentary question on Wednesday (5 July), Senior Minister (SM) Tharman Shanmugaratnam shared that the disruption in May was due to human error.
The error reportedly caused a “significant reduction” in system capacity, affecting the system’s ability to process a series of digital banking functions.
SM Tharman, who’s also the minister in charge of MAS, was responding to a two-part question by Jurong GRC MP Tan Wu Meng.
The latter had asked about the cause of the disruption and the steps taken to strengthen the reliability and resilience of retail banks in Singapore.
Answering on behalf of the Prime Minister, Mr Tharman said human error in coding the programme used for system maintenance was the chief reason for the disruption.
The error led to a significant reduction in system capacity. And in turn, this affected the system’s ability to process DBS’ digital banking services, such as:
Even though DBS’ digital service disruptions occurred just two months apart in March and May, the bank stressed that the causes behind the outages were unrelated.
While the most recent disruption was caused by human error, the one in March was reportedly caused by “inherent software bugs”.
In the wake of the disruption in March, DBS convened a Special Board Committee to investigate the root cause of the incident and conduct a review of the bank’s IT resilience.
Source: DBS
After the disruption in May, MAS ordered the Special Board Committee to expand its scope to cover the most recent incident and deploy “qualified independent third parties” to conduct the review.
DBS will provide more details on the incidents at a later date after the reviews are completed.
Mr Tharman also said the capital requirements imposed on DBS are a reflection of how serious MAS views these incidents and the impact they’ve had on customers.
Following the disruption in May, MAS increased DBS’ additional capital requirement to 1.8 times its risk-weighted assets, up from 1.5 times.
Depending on the outcome of the ongoing reviews, MAS may also amend the size of additional capital requirements on the bank and take other regulatory actions.
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Featured image adapted from Justin Hickling on Flickr and by MS News.
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