BPI urges clients not to ‘panic’ over system glitch

MANILA, Philippines – The Bank of the Philippine Islands on Wednesday, June 7, sought to ease the concerns of its 8 million customers who woke up to social media posts and news that there were BPI accounts with unauthorized transactions later found to be caused by a system glitch.

“Please do not panic….We will make sure that your money is there,” BPI Senior Vice President Catherine Santamaria said in a news conference to explain the system error glitch.

She sought to correct the impression that all BPI accounts were affected, saying, “The glitch also did not affect all BPI clients although it may appear so due to social media.”

The scope of the glitch is nationwide, but Santamaria declined to give an idea of the number of accounts that had unauthorized transactions.

Responding to questions, the BPI executive said the bank is “still putting the data together.”

“It’s also highly confidential. As you know, we are a bank….It’s information we cannot share at this point,” Santamaria said.

She reiterated that the affected customers did not lose any money, and that they would get their correct account balance by the end of Wednesday. (READ: BPI to clients: You’ll get your money back) 

BPI said in an advisory Wednesday afternoon that it had extended its banking hours to 7:30 pm on Wednesday to attend to customers, as the bank had taken down all of its electronic channels including ATMs to fix the glitch. Access would be made available only after a “complete resolution” of the problem, it said.

No hacking

Santamaria stressed that the glitch was due to a system error and was not in any way related to hacking. The Bank has had to deal with external threats in the past, particularly with an Eastern European Syndicate that had run a ATM skimming operation on its terminals for several years.

“Every day, the system does batch processing and somewhere in that process between midnight and this morning, there was an error,” she explained.

The error affects accounts that had any transactions between April 27- May 2.

Santamaria said that if there was any transaction  during that period, there may be a chance an account could be affected, including BPI Family Bank and corporate accounts.

She added that the glitch only affected accounts, and not credit cards.

BPI is also confident it will not need liquidity support from the central bank.

With regards to checks, Santamaria said:  “For checks issuances, [clients] will have to do it as a one-on-one in the bank. We have processes for that in place. For some checks, we will have to call the companies as well as make sure that the balances are there.”

No ‘bonus money’

During the briefing, Santamaria also reminded customers who suddenly had more money in their accounts due to the glitch not to spend any of it, as if they do, it will be debited from their account.

“For those who have extra credits, please don’t touch the money as it will be debited from your account. It’s not bonus money,” she said.

The BPI executive reiterated that despite what the account balances show, “there is no money that physically went in or out” of the bank.

“While it may appear that accounts balances either went up or down, the money is in the bank,” she said.

Responding to questions, she said it was still unclear if human error contributed to the incident, and that this was part of the investigation. – Rappler.com