Lloyds Banking Group has provided an update on compensation payments following a major IT failure. On Tuesday, it confirmed that it had paid out more than £200,000 in compensation after nearly half a million customers were affected by the incident. A further 80,500 people may have had their financial details exposed.
Additional Customers Affected
The high street lender revealed that the additional customers were joint account holders linked to some of the 446,915 Lloyds, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland customers who either viewed others' transactions or had their own data shared due to IT failures on March 12. In a follow-up letter to the Treasury Committee, Lloyds confirmed that while the 80,508 joint account holders did not access the banking app during the incident, their transaction details may have been viewed by others.
The bank stated: "We also issued an alert on the app home screen to these 80,508 joint account holders, with a small number of exceptions based on particular customer circumstances. In notifying these customers, our focus has been on providing reassurance and support."
Compensation Details
The revelation of further customer distress came as Lloyds confirmed it had paid out £201,000 to 5,250 individuals, with an additional £62,000 in "goodwill" payments handed to a further 1,625 customers since March 24. The lender also slightly revised the number of customers initially affected after logging into the app to 446,915, a marginal reduction from the original figure of 447,936, due to duplication in the data. The bank confirmed that 107,937 individuals accessed other customers' transactions when they became visible, down from the initial figure of 114,182. Consequently, they may have viewed sensitive details including account information, national insurance numbers, and payment references.
No Increase in Fraud
However, Lloyds emphasised that it had not witnessed a rise in daily fraud levels among those affected since the technical error on March 12. The banking group noted that personal information belonging to non-Lloyds customers had also been exposed, though it had received no complaints from customers of rival banks. The group stated it had not yet identified any customers who have incurred financial losses due to the breach.
"Accordingly, we have not made compensation payments on this basis," it said. "Separately, it is our existing practice that we may make goodwill payments for distress and inconvenience in individual cases, for example where there has been a direct impact on an individual."
Lloyds revealed last month that the incident stemmed from a "software defect" following an overnight IT update.
