“Unacceptable for a bank”: five days of outage that could hurt the Laurentian Bank

Business was already not going very well for one of the oldest banks in Quebec. Following a five-day outage of its online services, Laurentian Bank could now experience an exodus of its customers.

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“It’s unacceptable for a bank,” candidly admits the institution’s spokesperson, Merick Seguin, about the outage that has affected the institution since Sunday.

The breakdown in service affects all of the bank’s customers, who do not reveal their number for competitive reasons. It boasted of having 460,000 in 2021.

Everything has returned to normal since Thursday noon, he indicates, but this is not the case for two clients of the institution interviewed by The newspaper.

“It looks amateurish…” says Jean-François Racine, a customer for 25 years. His app was still not working as of 2:30 p.m. Thursday.

The trucker worries about missing payments and feels held hostage. “My appointment at another institution has already been made. It’s over for me, I’m taking all my assets out of there,” he asserts.

Same thing for Jean-David Sénécal, who had already been thinking about leaving the Laurentian Bank for a while.

“Knowing that they already weren’t very healthy, that’s the nail in the coffin. One day outage, OK. But five days? Honestly,” says the 58-year-old, who works in insurance.

He also still did not have access to his banking services Thursday afternoon.

Resolved, according to the bank

However, the problem is resolved, according to Laurentian. “It’s certain that it’s going to happen gradually, but we’ve got through it. Customers should all regain their access on Thursday,” assures the spokesperson.

Clients’ paychecks have indeed been deposited, he says, even if they can’t all see it. Old age pension checks too, like benefits from different governments.

All customers who have suffered late fees or any other costs will be reimbursed, the bank also promises. “No one is going to take on this out of their own pocket, that’s obvious,” says Mr. Seguin.

Very good, respond Jean-David Sénécal and Jean-François Racine, but it is too little, too late.

Worse and worse

The problem comes from an update of the central system which went wrong on Sunday. Laurentian will take the time to analyze everything once the storm has passed.

This five-day outage is a new blow for the smallest of the eight Canadian banks, already in difficulty.

Earlier this year, the institution put itself up for sale before ultimately abandoning a transaction.

According to some media, she received at least one purchase offer, but it was not generous enough.

This led to the dismissal of three senior executives among the 10 that the bank then had.

Otherwise, the quality of service to individuals has been in free fall for several years, according to many customers.

Let us also remember that the institution has as its CEO a unilingual English speaker, Rania Llewellyn, who is currently learning French. His controversial appointment in October 2020 caused a lot of ink to flow.