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BY GLENDA SOLOGASTOA
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Thursday, June 8, 2017
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ILOILO City – A glitch in the Bank of the Philippine Islands’ (BPI) data processing system sent its Ilonggo depositors reeling from vanishing bank deposits.
The problem was experienced nationwide, BPI confirmed yesterday.
BPI client Donna Mercine ranted on Facebook that P4,700 disappeared from her bank account. She immediately went to the bank and filed a complaint.
Meanwhile, a friend Mercine did not identify experienced something different; P10,000 was mysteriously deposited to her bank account.
This friend, surprised by the unexpected financial bonanza, immediately withdrew the P10,000, according to Mercine.
At 165 years old, BPI is the country’s oldest bank.
According to its latest annual report, BPI had nearly eight million clients and P1.4 trillion in total deposits at the end of 2016.
Two middle-aged women who asked not to be named rushed to BPI automated teller machines at a mall in this city to check their bank accounts after hearing of the system glitch.
The women, however, failed to make any ATM transaction.
BPI explained it suspended access to electronic banking while the data errors were being corrected.
It apologized to its clients for the inconvenience and assured them that the internal data processing error would be corrected quickly.
No money was actually stolen, it stressed.
It also advised those whose accounts were credited not to withdraw the money as this would be automatically debited once the glitch had been fixed.
“I apologize very earnestly and very sincerely to our clients who had been adversely affected,” said BPI president and chief executive officer Cezar Consing on national television.
Over the next few hours, he said, they were making sure the double credits or debits were corrected.
Consing denied BPI’s system was hacked.
“This is a data processing glitch, not a hack at all. This is an internal issue” and no outside third party was involved, he said./PN
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