InvestmentsOct 21 2014

Tyrie demands answers over BoE technical glitch

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The Bank of England has had its knuckles wrapped by the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, following the Bank of England’s Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system suffering a technical fault yesterday, delaying many billions worth of mortgage deals.

After the BoE paused RTGS, the separate Clearing House Automated Payment System (Chaps) became unable to process payments throughout most of yesterday (20 October) afternoon.

By 4pm Chaps was able to start processing the backlog of payments and stated it was confident that all payments submitted will be processed by the end of Monday, extending its operating times until 19.40pm.

RTGS closed at 8pm with all 142,759 payments submitted before the extended deadline having been processed.

The BoE stated that it has put in place extra steps to monitor the system at opening today at 6.00am and apologised for any problems caused by the delays to the settlement of payments, adding that it has launched a thorough, independent review of the incident.

Andrew Tyrie, select committee chairman, stated: “A crucial part of the UK’s financial infrastructure failed for several hours today. I will be writing to the Bank of England to find out why.

“The whole economy depends on a reliable payment system. We need to have confidence that the cause has been found and addressed.”

peter.walker@ft.com