CAF Bank admits that an upgrade has not gone as planned

Voluntary groups have been left without access to their accounts – after serious system failures from a charity bank.

Customers of CAF Bank have been reporting issues since an upgrade went live last week.

Some say they have not been able to access accounts while others are also reporting long waits for customer support.

A charity finance manager, who asked not to be named, said: “It’s been a shambles. I know of charities who are now having payroll issues, having been locked out of their accounts. I also know of people who have given up waiting for technical support after a few days.”

Stuart Duffy, manager of My Cowdenbeath CIC, told TFN about his group’s experiences.

He said: “We’ve been with CAF Bank for a few years and their system updates were well overdue, it was previously like banking with a company from the 1980s, with their paper-based basic processes and lack of customer service.

“Anyway, without any prior trailing of the changes, they wrote to customers in May telling us to prepare for ‘Better Banking” with a new system coming soon. They then wrote again in May with a ‘Get Ready for Better Banking Checklist’ to ease customers into the new system launch. It seems they should have spent way more time on their own planning as the only thing not prepared for the launch was the bank themselves!

“Not only have we been without any access to our account for two weeks now, neither can our trustees or online banking users, and we are unable to speak to CAF Bank because of how royally they’ve tanked their customer service lines due to the problems.  

“So for nearly two weeks we’ve been trying to get through so we can marry our new user ID for online banking with a temporary password which they didn’t send us!  Hold times have often gone into hours and hours, with no success getting an advisor.

“When I rang their customer service line they’re not even letting people into the queue to wait, just giving a ‘call back later’ message.”

He added: “It’s a disaster and there should be far greater scrutiny of this bank, how they’ve planned for this implementation, how they’ve dealt with the engagement with customers, how they are fixing issues and the speed of their customer service responsiveness to the crisis.

“For organisations who are trying their best to support communities in crisis already, this has been handled appallingly and the people at the bank responsible for this should be feeling the heat from their customer base, their shareholders, form the press and from government - it is not good enough.”

CAF Bank apologised and said it is working to get through a backlog caused by its transition to the new service, admitting that some aspects are “not functioning as planned”.

In a statement, Dina Henry, chief operating officer, said: “We are continuing to support as many customers as possible to log into online banking, help them to manage their accounts and familiarise themselves with the new service.
 
“We apologise for the ongoing wait times on calls. The extra people on phone support are helping to reduce the time spent waiting, but the queues are longer than we, or you, would like. When the queues are long, we sometimes take the difficult decision to stop further calls joining the queue, so that we can speak to customers who are waiting. I completely understand that it’s frustrating to be advised to call back later and resolving this is a top priority.
 
“Upgrading our systems was an immensely complex, technical undertaking and despite thorough testing before we launched, we are finding some aspects are not functioning as we planned. We are committed to promptly addressing these and continually making improvements to fix the issues our customers are facing. We are wholly-owned by a charity ourselves, so we completely appreciate how important this is.

“Thank you for your feedback and for your patience with our staff who are dedicated to working with you on this transition.”