An on and off day for ANZ

A hard disk failure left hundreds of thousands of customers of ANZ waiting for service yesterday. For many customers internet banking, telephone banking and the call centre service either did not work, or worked slowly and inconsistently for most of the working day.

The disk failure resulted in reduced capacity rather than a complete loss of services, though no doubt some customers saw things the latter way.

Degraded services are pretty rare at big banks. The last one notable enough to report in Banking Day was the extended interruption to service at Commonwealth Bank in July 2009.

The problem started around 10am yesterday, and was resolved early in the evening.

ANZ said it has around 1.8 million active users of internet banking in Australia. Customers must have used the service in the last 60 days to count as active.

Other service channels such as ATMs and Eftpos were unaffected, ANZ said.