RBS chief admits bank under-invested in systems

This morning the new chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland Ross McEwan admitted his bank had under-invested in its systems for decades and he apologised for last night's "unacceptable" crash.

The serious system problem affected more than one million customers of RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank, leaving many without access to their accounts.

“For decades, RBS failed to invest properly in its systems,” Mr McEwa said. “I will be outlining plans in the New Year for making RBS the bank that our customers and the UK need it to be. This will include an outline of where we intend to invest for the future.”

The error, which left thousands of Ulster Bank customers unable to access their accounts last night, has been resolved and the bank has once again apologised to customers for the breakdown.

Customers at the Ulster Bank’s parent company Royal Bank of Scotland and its subsidiary NatWest in the UK were also affected by the problem which became apparent at around 6.30pm yesterday, the busiest day of the year for online shopping.

In a statement issued this morning RBS confirmed the technical issues had been resolved after a system failure of some 12 hours .

Late last night Ulster Bank issued a separate statement in which it said its customers were reporting that its services were coming back on line. “If customers have been left out of pocket as a result of these system problems, we will put this right,” a spokeswoman said.

“If any customer is unable to resolve an issue caused by the disruption, they should get in touch with our call centres or come into a branch in the morning where our staff will be ready to help,” she added.

In June of 2012, the three banks experienced a massive computer failure at a data processing centre which left around 600,000 people without access to their funds for weeks and Ulster Bank was forced to pay out tens of millions of euro to cover refunds and compensation for affected customers.