Customers at Citizens Financial Group were prevented on Wednesday from accessing their online and mobile accounts, in what the company has described as an issue with its technology.
At about 8:30 a.m., the Providence, R.I., company announced on Twitter that its digital channels were unavailable to customers. A Citizens spokesman confirmed the outage, describing it as a “technical issue.” The underlying problem was resolved by the early afternoon, though "some customers" were still unable to access their accounts due to "residual access delays," according to the spokesman.
"I want to reiterate that we apologize to customers for any inconvenience," the spokesman said in an email. No additional details about the nature of the problem or the number of customers affected were provided.
Rain falls outside a Citizens Bank location in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013. Photographer: Kelvin Ma/Bloomberg
The $153.5 billion-asset Citizens has experienced a number of technical glitches in recent months, according to media reports.
The company suffered an outage in late April, leaving customers unable to access their accounts for several hours. Additionally, in March, Citizens customers in Cleveland discovered missing payments and unprocessed online bills, in what the company described as a “vendor processing issue.”
Citizens' outage on Wednesday is the latest a string of tech-related snafus across the banking industry.
In its latest financial stability report, the Federal Reserve found that asset prices continue to exceed underlying fundamentals and leverage levels remain high, especially by hedge funds.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's exit from a suit jointly filed with the New York attorney general's office narrows a major subprime lending case.
Ranjana Clark is the newest member of Texas Capital Bancshares' board of directors; Minnesota's Wings Credit Union and Colorado's Ent Credit Union are merging; Regions Bank adds Angela Santone to its C-suite; and more in this week's banking news roundup.
The Long Island-based regional bank, which reported another quarterly loss Friday, continues to hire in the commercial-and-industrial lending sphere as it seeks to diversify its commercial real estate-heavy business.