Britain's Lloyds Banking Group suffers hours-long online outage

Customers of Lloyds Banking Group said on social media that they were unable to use mobile apps or websites to access their accounts since early morning on New Year's Day, a public holiday when bank branches are shut. — Reuters

LONDON: Britain's Lloyds Banking Group suffered an outage on Jan 1 that left customers of its Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland operations unable to access accounts online for several hours.

Disruption to online services is a periodic problem for Britain's banks, and last month regulators told lenders they needed to resolve problems more swiftly.