TT(O)M

BNF Bank spent more than €1 million stabilising services after a troubled core-system upgrade in late March that left customers locked out of accounts, unable to make payments and scrambling for answers. That is the picture painted by CEO David Power in an exclusive Times of Malta interview, six months after the migration went badly wrong. I have covered this story before — examining the technical failures and the bank’s security posture — and this will likely be my final instalment on the affair. My earlier pieces set out the timeline and the phishing fallout; they remain available for readers who want a deeper chronology and the earlier reporting. What the CEO told the paper David Power described the project as “massive”: BNF replaced “every single system in the bank” and switched card providers from Visa to Mastercard on the same weekend. He says the bank tested the new platform for 18 months and ran more than 3,500 tests before go-live, but that on the day of the launch “one of ...

This screenshot shows an erroneous transaction from my banking app - one I personally experienced. The incident taught me several lessons, but most importantly: check your statements regularly. Had I not caught this withdrawal, it likely would have become permanent. For accounts with significant activity, weekly reviews are essential. These checks needn’t be time-consuming - just a few minutes, perhaps during an ad break, to verify your recent transactions. When I reported the error, the bank responded within 24 hours and confirmed their mistake. However, getting them to explicitly admit “We made a mistake” proved surprisingly challenging. Mistakes can happen even with advanced technology and controls in place, despite everyone’s best intentions. Yet it raised a troubling question: what if our roles had been reversed? Had I made the error instead of the bank, I would likely have faced multiple charges - “processing fees,” “adjustment fees,” “error fees” - all automatically appli...