ANZ’s flawed disclosure could damage public trust in outage data regime

George Lekakis

Two banks that reported industry-leading outage times for their digital banking platforms in the December quarter have amended their disclosure statements after identifying “errors” in the way they reported service availability.

Beyond Bank and ANZ on Monday reported the highest outage levels in the local banking sector but have since retracted their original disclosures.

Beyond Bank originally said that its digital banking platforms were not available for 57 hours during the quarter, but that has been marked down to zero hours lost after it identified a data entry error.

ANZ, which on Monday reported losing 38 hours and 37 minutes of service time – a quarterly record for one of the four major banks - yesterday removed the original disclosure document from its website on concerns it had over-stated its outage experience.

Banking Day understands that ANZ had been engaged in consultations with the Reserve Bank of Australia for most of Wednesday before issuing a revised disclosure statement about its outage experience in the December 2021 quarter.

ANZ last night published the new disclosure statement that showed a reduction of more than 10 outage hours.

The bank now says that it lost 28 hours and 26 minutes to service interruptions in the quarter.

The reduction was exclusively due to a revision of downtime for providing customers access to real time payments – which was amended from almost 16 hours to 5 hours and 46 minutes.

An ANZ spokesperson confirmed the bank had identified errors in its calculation of outage time for fast payment services and said the bank promised to get its disclosure right in the future.

“In our reporting for these new requirements we incorrectly included degraded service data with service outage data,” the ANZ spokesperson said.

“We recognise the importance of this reporting and of getting it right.

“We will make sure we improve our data quality for future reports.”

The methodology used for calculating reportable outages, which is overseen by the RBA, requires banks to report incidents that affect at least ten per cent of customers for 30 minutes or more.

ANZ’s original disclosure statement included service incidents that did not meet either or both of these benchmarks.

ANZ’s amended disclosure has stoked concerns within the banking industry that public trust in the reporting framework could be damaged if underperforming banks develop a habit of revising data.

Peter Drennan, the managing director of Qi Insights, a research firm that tracks outage data, said that public confidence in the disclosure framework hangs on banks getting their reporting right the first time.

“It’s not clear what the reporting standards for outages is meant to be,” he said. “I think there is a grey area here because it’s hard for people outside of the banks to verify the disclosures they make.”

While ANZ is promising to improve its disclosure, Beyond Bank chief executive Robert Keogh went a step further on Wednesday after announcing a wide-ranging review of his organisation’s reporting procedures.

Beyond Bank attributed the mis-reporting of its outage time in the December quarter to human error.

“Beyond Bank prides itself on its industry-leading customer satisfaction standards and, as one of Australia’s largest customer-owned banks, it is committed to ensuring it provides a transparent, reliable and trusted banking model for its many customers across Australia,” Keogh said.

“Beyond Bank apologises for this reporting oversight and has since contacted relevant regulatory authorities to ensure they have the correct information as well as commencing a thorough internal review of its reporting procedures and protocols.”