Banking services at First City Monument Bank were grounded on Monday and customers of FCMB left unattended for most part of the working day as the bank’s electronic system failed woefully.
At various branches of the bank, customers’ data bank could not be accessed for daily banking services. “Our network is down, the system is down,” were the ready answers of bank staff to agitated customers who were visibly disappointed.
This trend has become more frequent in recent times as the bank’s system installed capacity has proved inadequate for handing the surge in their customer base.
FCMB and Finbank merger has led to increase in the number of clients that FCMB would handle. At the Alaba International Market branch of FCMB, large numbers of customers were kept unattended until about 3:30 pm yesterday when the system signal was restored for banking services.
The Bank’s management announced gleefully last week that it had concluded integration with Finbank and was ready to run full blast as one bank onwards.
At the two branches at Junction Bus stop and Electrical section of the market, the story was the same. A bank worker said, “We are waiting for the network to come, I also have something to do or don’t you pray that we should work?
“We are not working the network is down, you can try the other branch at Electrical”, the staff said to this customer.
A woman who had come since the morning hours and needed to collect fund sent through the WebFast fund transfer was visibly hysterical over the possibility of not accessing the fund. She was left hopeless just like many others and did not hesitate to bemoan the situation. “I have been here since morning, I need to collect this money, in fact I have disappointed my customer that is expecting this money this morning. This is very unfair”, she lamented to THE CITIZEN.
Interestingly though, deposit taking was going on uninterrupted but all forms of withdrawal were affected by the unavailability of network.
A manager in one of the branches, who spoke on the condition of anonymity told THE CITIZEN that efforts were being made to fix the problems. He acknowledged the merging of the operations of FCMB and legacy FinBank had resulted in network instability, justifying the situation as he said that it was not unexpected.
All efforts to speak with Mr. Tunde Shofowura of the Corporate Communications unit of FCMB on the issue were abortive.
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Source: The Citizen
