Ring-fencing of day to day banking services is one of the reforms brought in by the UK government to strengthen the UK’s financial system following the financial crisis that began in 2008. Ring-fencing legislation requires each of the larger UK high street banks to separate certain retail and smaller corporate banking activity and products from their investment banking activities in the City.
In order to ring-fence retail and business banking services, banks are starting to make changes to their banking systems. Unfortunately this can mean some extended outage periods to enable banks to make those changes.
Barclays have announced that work on their systems will take place during one weekend each month, for five months (with the exception of December). They will start at 23:30 on a Saturday and typically complete around 15:30 Sunday afternoon. Customers will be informed of the exact dates through the Barclays app, online banking, or via SMS or email.
If you bank with Barclays you may have noticed limited access to banking facilities this past weekend as work was taking place from 11:30pm on Saturday evening and was scheduled to be completed by 3:30pm on Sunday.
Services which will be affected by the work include: Online Banking; Mobile Banking app; Telephone Banking; Pingit; and Transferring money into / out of your account. You will still be able to make card payments (so long as you have funds in your account) and be able to check your balance and withdraw funds at cash points.
If you bank with Barclays, you should find all your normal banking facilities working by the time you get into work on Monday morning after each maintenance period.
