Natwest/RBS glitch
Discussion
No - I'm one of the few people that have worked for 30 years and have bought my house and have savings. I make pin money walking a dog and doing odd jobs. I have a 6 year old Ford Ka that I bought new.
I'm of the unfortunate age that has to wait another 7 years till I can get a state pension so I have to make every penny count.
I'm of the unfortunate age that has to wait another 7 years till I can get a state pension so I have to make every penny count.
condor said:
No - I'm one of the few people that have worked for 30 years and have bought my house and have savings. I make pin money walking a dog and doing odd jobs. I have a 6 year old Ford Ka that I bought new.
I'm of the unfortunate age that has to wait another 7 years till I can get a state pension so I have to make every penny count.
I feel almost sad... Shattered dreams Condor.... All but a broken man here... I'm of the unfortunate age that has to wait another 7 years till I can get a state pension so I have to make every penny count.
I have a small contingency fund to cover for any emergencies that might happen...especially valid as I bank with RBS 
For anyone interested in some technical speculation, this is on TheRegister:
"Unless it has changed drastically, IIRC RBS (and Natwest, they migrated Natwest customers to the RBS system after the takeover) update main customer accounts in batch (on an IBM mainframe, natch.) overnight via a number of "feeder systems" (BACS, Accounting Interface ,etc.) through a number of "streams" through their main account update system (can't remember the exact name it had, Sceptre? - something like that) which cover a range of branches. These originally reflected the distance of the branch from Edinburgh, so stream 'A' was branches in the far distant north and run first, allowing the van with the printouts to leave earliest as it had the furthest to go. Seem to recall that Natwest started at stream 'L'.
The actual definitive customer account updates were carried out by a number of programs written in assembly language dating back to about 1969-70, and updated since then. These were also choc-full of obscure business rules ("magic" cheque numbers triggered specific processing) and I do not believe anyone there really knew how it all worked anymore, even back in 2001. I remember sitting in a meeting discussing how the charge for using an ATM which charged for withdrawals could be added as a separate item to a customer statement and waving a couple of pages of printouts of the source of one of them. The universal reaction was "wow, can you actually read that?". I can't see them having mucked about with that one too much, since good assembler people are like hen's teeth and it was decidedly non-trivial to make any changes to it, but the accounting rules did change frequently in the feeder systems. My bet is that some change has resulted in discrepancies in the eventual output from these systems, and a combination of retirement and redundancies has left them with very few people who know how it is all supposed to work, and therefore identify the cause of the error and fix it. Or they might have just blown the size limit on one of the output files from the various feeder systems (VSAM IIRC, limit was 4GB, unless they moved to the extended types), or possibly the FICON cable just dropped out of the back of whatever device some of the disk volumes live on.
Anyway, very complex stuff which all has to just work together. Of course, the moral is, complex mainframe systems require staff with the skills, and in this case, the specific system knowledge to keep things smooth. The fewer of these you have, the more difficult it is to recover from problems like this."
"Unless it has changed drastically, IIRC RBS (and Natwest, they migrated Natwest customers to the RBS system after the takeover) update main customer accounts in batch (on an IBM mainframe, natch.) overnight via a number of "feeder systems" (BACS, Accounting Interface ,etc.) through a number of "streams" through their main account update system (can't remember the exact name it had, Sceptre? - something like that) which cover a range of branches. These originally reflected the distance of the branch from Edinburgh, so stream 'A' was branches in the far distant north and run first, allowing the van with the printouts to leave earliest as it had the furthest to go. Seem to recall that Natwest started at stream 'L'.
The actual definitive customer account updates were carried out by a number of programs written in assembly language dating back to about 1969-70, and updated since then. These were also choc-full of obscure business rules ("magic" cheque numbers triggered specific processing) and I do not believe anyone there really knew how it all worked anymore, even back in 2001. I remember sitting in a meeting discussing how the charge for using an ATM which charged for withdrawals could be added as a separate item to a customer statement and waving a couple of pages of printouts of the source of one of them. The universal reaction was "wow, can you actually read that?". I can't see them having mucked about with that one too much, since good assembler people are like hen's teeth and it was decidedly non-trivial to make any changes to it, but the accounting rules did change frequently in the feeder systems. My bet is that some change has resulted in discrepancies in the eventual output from these systems, and a combination of retirement and redundancies has left them with very few people who know how it is all supposed to work, and therefore identify the cause of the error and fix it. Or they might have just blown the size limit on one of the output files from the various feeder systems (VSAM IIRC, limit was 4GB, unless they moved to the extended types), or possibly the FICON cable just dropped out of the back of whatever device some of the disk volumes live on.
Anyway, very complex stuff which all has to just work together. Of course, the moral is, complex mainframe systems require staff with the skills, and in this case, the specific system knowledge to keep things smooth. The fewer of these you have, the more difficult it is to recover from problems like this."
Piersman2 said:
I've been banging on about the UK allowing it's intellectual property to be leeched away to Asia by a succession of lazy, accountant driven managers for a few years now. We really need to wake up to this because when we've lost the knowledge we've lost it. We have a whole generation coming through with no graduate schemes available as the UK companies managers all try to make themselves look good for their 3 year rotation by sending work abroad to 'cheap' locations and hide the true costs to make it seem effective.
Of course, 4 years down the line the issues; lack of knowledge, lack of ownership, lack of development, lack of innovation, lack of QA, etc... all come home to roost and the almighty f
k ups begin... with no-one around who knows how to sort it.
I'd hope the other companies off-shoring would look at this and consider whether accountant driven savings in the short term are really the best long term approach to business... but I don't expect they will as let's face it 'It won't happen to us' will be the mentality.
You are dead right with all that. There is just no getting through to the fannies at the top - even when these offshoring plans are a dead set failureOf course, 4 years down the line the issues; lack of knowledge, lack of ownership, lack of development, lack of innovation, lack of QA, etc... all come home to roost and the almighty f
k ups begin... with no-one around who knows how to sort it.I'd hope the other companies off-shoring would look at this and consider whether accountant driven savings in the short term are really the best long term approach to business... but I don't expect they will as let's face it 'It won't happen to us' will be the mentality.
Condor - do you have 300k squirrelled away under your sofa just incase your house purchase goes tits up? No? Do you pay all your utility bills via cash stuffed under your mattress? No?
Well in that case, pipe down, as that was the point I was making.
fk me.
Edited slightly
Well in that case, pipe down, as that was the point I was making.
f
k me.Edited slightly
Edited by hornetrider on Sunday 24th June 09:20
Here's the actual off-shored job that is probably at the centre of the storm:
http://hyderabad.quikr.com/Batch-Admin-with-CA7-to...
It seems the lack of genuine mainframe skills in India, for the CA-7 batch scheduler and legacy assembler code have caused the inevitable.
http://hyderabad.quikr.com/Batch-Admin-with-CA7-to...
It seems the lack of genuine mainframe skills in India, for the CA-7 batch scheduler and legacy assembler code have caused the inevitable.
I remember Nat West adverts proclaiming their service to be the best because, unlike other Banks, you could actually speak to a human being and that human being would be there next time you went back. This was a untrue, as the staff never stayed longer then a year and anything you did ask them resulted in them entering your data into a terminal and awaiting the result. Think of the 'computer say no' sketch, it could have been written for them. The 'Manager' was nothing more than a data input clerk and had no decision making power whatsoever. It was pathetic
I work for a large pharma company ($30 billion plus sales per year) and our IT provision is a cobbled together mess. A mixture of legacy systems, make do and mend, failed half-complete projects across multiple platforms. So I'm not surprised that other large companies IT less than perfect!
Ozzie Osmond said:
Can somebody just remind us about Stephen Hester's modest bonus for doing such an excellent job?
His bonus for this year has not been announced yet. It won't be for months, so it's not clear what point you are trying to make. His last bonus was for last (and previous) year's work.Are you suggesting that remuneration panels be filled with psychics now? Would you have bonuses based on unknown future events?
How's that going to work?
Pupp said:
Anyone else noticed that their accounts seemed to have updated yesterday but have now rolled back to thurs/friday figs as of this morning? Think this is very far from 'fixed'
Mine haven't updated at all since Friday. Agree it's far from 'fixed', but then, since the new regime began they lie all the time so there's no point believing it's fixed until it actually IS fixed if at all.NorthernBoy said:
His bonus for this year has not been announced yet. It won't be for months, so it's not clear what point you are trying to make.
It's all about perception, and clearly you are a little sensitive on that subject. Or to put it another way, "Highly paid bloke in charge of an absolute shambles".After all, can you tell me when bank branches last had to open all weekend in attempt to placate customers?
Ozzie Osmond said:
NorthernBoy said:
His bonus for this year has not been announced yet. It won't be for months, so it's not clear what point you are trying to make.
It's all about perception, and clearly you are a little sensitive on that subject. Or to put it another way, "Highly paid bloke in charge of an absolute shambles".After all, can you tell me when bank branches last had to open all weekend in attempt to placate customers?
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