UK financial watchdog to investigate RBS outages

According to Retail Banking, RBS said that problem surfaced when an error in software used to run payments caused the rest of the payment program to break down. The failure left customers of RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank to carry out their banking transactions for weeks.

"The Financial Conduct Authority has started to conduct an enforcement investigation into the IT failures at RBS which affected the bank's customers in June and July 2012," said an FCA statement. "The FCA will reach its conclusions in due course and will decide whether or not enforcement action should follow that investigation."

RBS, which is 82 percent government owned,  has experienced persistent problems keeping its IT systems up and running to serve more then 17 million customers. 

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