National Australia Bank Ltd. experienced a nationwide system outage May 26, and said it would refund customers affected by the incident.
Cindy Batchelor, the bank's executive general manager for business, said the outage was caused by a power issue and was an "incredibly rare event." The incident started at around 7:50 a.m. local time, and all systems were back up at 2:30 p.m. local time.
Batchelor clarified that no personal data had been compromised, and that the bank will work with customers who had lost money due to the incident.
Customers of the bank were unable to access banking services, including ATMs and internet and mobile banking. The bank's chief customer officer for business and private banking, Anthony Healy, acknowledged and apologized for the issue through a video posted on the bank's Twitter account.
NAB unit Bank of New Zealand experienced a similar system failure on the same day due to the outage at its parent company's Melbourne systems, The New Zealand Herald reported May 27, citing the lender's communications manager Cliff Joiner.
The bank was able to restore systems on the same day.
Joiner noted that no personal information of customers had been compromised following the outage, but said the bank has not yet made a decision on whether it will compensate customers who lost money due to the outage.
