The disruption to DBS digital banking services on March 19 was caused by an “erroneous step” when performing a system change, said Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong on Wednesday (April 8).

In a written parliamentary reply, Gan, who is also the Minister for Trade and Industry and Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), stated that the authority will “follow-up with DBS to strengthen their change management process.”

The disruption lasted for approximately one hour, from 12:03 pm to 1:19 pm, and prevented customers from viewing their deposit balances.

Some customers also could not make payments through digital channels.

However, ATMs, credit cards, and NETS debit cards remained accessible throughout the period, and DBS was able to recover its systems and restore all services after one hour.

Alex Yeo, Potong Pasir SMC member of Parliament, questioned Gan on whether DBS had identified the root cause of the disruption, if it resembled previous incidents, and how the bank was addressing it.

Yeo also enquired how MAS would take further steps to ensure that banks strengthen the resilience and reliability of their digital banking services.

Addressing the regulatory standards for banks, Gan said MAS has set a clear expectation for institutions to limit unscheduled downtime for critical systems to four hours for any rolling period of 12 months.

“This expectation holds banks to high standards of system resiliency while recognising that operational disruptions can sometimes happen due to the complexity of systems,”

he said.

He added that banks must “swiftly and safely” restore services whenever a system outage occurs.

Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by eakkachaihalang via Freepik