KUALA LUMPUR: Bank Negara Malaysia has fined Malayan Banking Bhd for e-banking service outages.
In a notice posted on its website, BNM said Maybank was fined RM4.3 million for the unplanned downtime.
Between June 1, 2023 and May 31, 2024, Maybank's Regional Mobile Banking Platform and MAE applications experienced multiple unplanned downtime that caused prolonged disruptions in several banking services interface with customers and counterparties.
"Upon investigation into the root cause leading to the incidents, it was found that Maybank's non-compliance resulted from its inability to recover effectively and promptly from the unexpected system disruptions, which severely impacted the interface experience of online banking services for its customers and counterparties."
"Measures by Maybank to further strengthen its application and infrastructure resiliency as required by BNM were also incomplete at the time of the incidents which impeded recovery effects," BNM said.
Separately, BNM added, another bank was fined RM760,000, on July 29, 2024.
The bank's customers had experienced prolonged service disruptions on April 8 and 9, 2024, which affected e-banking channels, Automated Teller Machines (ATM), as well as debit cards and credit cards.
BNM said that the bank's non-compliance was due to lapses in the execution of its response and recovery processes, which delayed the restoration of disrupted systems and impacted the availability of essential banking services for its customers and counterparties.
According to BNM, financial institutions must ensure their relevant critical systems are designed for high availability, specifically cumulative unplanned downtime that affects user interface must not be more than four hours on a rolling 12-month basis; and maximum tolerable downtime of 120 minutes per incident.
BNM said Maybank has since taken the necessary actions to address the gaps as part of its multi-year infrastructure investments to prevent future non-compliance.
Both banks have paid their fines, with Maybank settling theirs on Aug 8.
"BNM expects all financial institutions to maintain a high level of technology resilience against operational disruptions to ensure the continuous availability of essential financial services. "BNM will not hesitate to take appropriate supervisory and enforcement actions if financial institutions fall short of regulatory expectations," it said.