Thousands of Lloyds Banking Group customers were locked out of their accounts on Wednesday after an online banking outage, while the bank simultaneously faced a backlash over plans to remove the ability to rename accounts online.
Users started reporting problems at around 11:15 BST, according to online outage tracker Downdetector. Thousands of people reported issues across the group's three brands: Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland. Lloyds posted on X: "We're aware some customers are having issues with our app and online banking. We're really sorry about this." Halifax added: "Some customers are having issues with accessing our Mobile App right now. Bear with us as we fix this."
“Lloyds apologised after thousands lost access to online banking, while also facing criticism over removing account renaming feature.”
One customer said the bank went down as they tried to send money. Another said they could not access online banking on either the app or the website. The Lloyds app displayed a 503 error message, indicating a server was not ready to handle requests. By Wednesday afternoon, a spokesperson told the BBC: "All our services are back up and running. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused, and if customers are still experiencing any issues, please leave it a few minutes and try again."
The outage is the latest IT problem for the UK's largest retail and commercial banking provider, which serves 26 million customers. In March, almost half a million customers saw other people's transactions or had their own data shared after an IT glitch.
Now the bank is also facing criticism over a change to its online banking settings. An account holder took to social media to complain: "It appears Lloyds Bank is driving customers away from online banking. In coming weeks, the ability to rename accounts online will disappear and accounts will go back to their original names. They say we will still be able to view or edit account nicknames in the app. No explanation."
Lloyds confirmed the change, saying: "To keep you informed, the option to rename accounts in Online Banking is being removed. This means any accounts previously renamed online will return to their original names. You won't be able to rename them online going forward." The bank explained the rationale: "The change is to simplify how accounts are displayed and improve consistency across Online Banking and the app."
But the customer remained dissatisfied: "This is unhelpful. People running a business use online banking, not the app. They have more than one account. They want to quickly see the account to use by looking at its unique name, not figure out account numbers. Why is this change happening?"