BSP monitors impact of tech outage

MANILA, Philippines — The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is closely monitoring the impact of the global Microsoft and Crowdstrike outage, as some financial institutions have experienced disruptions.

In a statement late Friday, the central bank said some BSP-supervised financial institutions (BSFIs) are addressing the issue while some have already restored their affected systems.

“The BSP has required affected BSFIs to provide updates and activate their resilience and continuity plans as needed,” the central bank said.

It also noted that the BSP’s Peso Real Time Gross Settlement System or PhilPassPlus was unaffected. All settlements such as PESONet, Instapay, ATM and checks were successfully completed last Friday.

“The financial system remains resilient, with alternative channels and digital platforms available for individuals and businesses,” the BSP said.

The Philippines experienced disruptions in the media, telecommunications, banking, shipping and air travel sectors due to a major outage affecting Microsoft’s 365 applications and services.

Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) said that the global issue affected the bank’s computer units, impacting certain operations and causing longer wait times in branches and contact centers.

Customers also experienced delays in crediting financial transactions such as bill payments and interbank fund transfers, as other institutions were likewise affected.

“Our technical team is already coordinating closely with the provider to resolve this issue,” BPI said in a Facebook post. “Rest assured that this issue should not be a cause of concern.”

Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co. (Metrobank) informed customers that they could still utilize automated teller machines despite the online system outage.

“With the ongoing global outage related to Microsoft-based systems, customers may experience a slowdown or temporary unavailability of some bank products and services through our online channels,” Metrobank said on Friday.

Union Bank of the Philippines also said the global IT outage affected one of its system providers, causing its customer service hotline and some branch services to be temporarily unavailable.

“Rest assured that our team is working with our affected service provider to restore our full services as soon as possible,” UnionBank said.

Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) acknowledged encountering system issues but did not explicitly attribute these to the global outage.

“RCBC is currently experiencing technical difficulties affecting RCBC Pulz, RCBC Online Banking, and Diskartech, resulting in a slowdown in some of your online banking transactions,” it said.