Senate to await BSP report on bank ‘glitch’ before further inquiry
THE BANK of the Philippine Islands (BPI) and BDO, Unibank, Inc. (BDO) faced the Senate Committee on banks, financial institutions, and currencies after separate incidents of deactivation of automated services a week apart, on June 7 and June 16.
But there was nothing clear about the committee’s next step after hearing assurances from officials of the two banks about their banking service, these incidents notwithstanding.
“Actually, we used it as a venue to placate fears dahil ang daming balitang lumalabas ( because there was as lot of news coming out),” Sen. Francis Joseph G. Escudero, committee chairman, told reporters after the hearing that the committee conducted in a mere two-plus hours.
“Kung kinakailangan pa magko- conduct kami ng isa pang inquiry pero titignan na muna namin yung final report ng BSP (If we have to, we will conduct another inquiry, but let’s see first the final report of the [Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas]),” the senator also said, referring to the BSP’s own inquiry into those incidents.
“Uulitin ko, para lang mapagbigay alam sa publiko kung ano ba talaga ang nangyari at hindi sila mag-alang alang kaugnay sa seguridad ng kanilang deposito sa bangko,” Mr. Escudero added. (I reiterate, this is just to let the public know what really happened and to ease their concerns about the security of their deposits.)
He also said, in a separate text message when further sought for comment, that BSP’s final report “may contain recommended legislation if any.”
‘HUMAN ERROR’
BPI officials, in their testimonies and presentation, reaffirmed that the deactivation of their automated services on June 7 was not a result of hacking but an “error in judgement from one of (our) programmers.”
Without naming the programmer, BPI executive vice-president Ramon L. Jocson said: “this particular person is to be blamed,” but that she had also “owned up to committing the mistake.”
BPI president and CEO Cezar P. Consing, for his part, described this episode as being “a case of human error.”
Bank officials stopped short of identifying the since reassigned employee whom they referred to nevertheless as a “she.” Mr. Consing, for his part, quantified this episode’s setback, saying the shutdown, “for a period of 26 hours spread over a period of 37 hours,” affected 1.5 million of the bank’s 8 million clients.