April 11, 2002
(IDG News Service)
The Japanese government has urged two newly formed Japanese banks to fix their computer glitches and take steps to prevent a recurrence of the bugs that caused chaos last week (see story).
The holding company for the two banks, Mizuho Bank Ltd. and Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd., was called on by the Japanese parliament this week to report on progress. On Tuesday afternoon, Terunobu Maeda, president and CEO of Mizuho Holdings Inc., apologized for the problems.
More than a week has passed since the chaos began, on the day the two banks were formed as part of a finance-industry reorganization in Japan. The incidents included automated teller machines (ATM) that weren't working, 3 million debits for utility and credit card bills that went unprocessed and 30,000 transactions that were double-debited.
By the end of last week, Tokyo-based Mizuho Holdings announced that the problems had been cleared and that all it needed to do was process the delayed debits. But on Monday, some of its ATMs stopped working again, and an additional 30,000 double debits were found, according to a statement issued by Mizuho Holdings on Tuesday.
Some 150,000 delayed debits, which were scheduled for April 1, still remained unprocessed as of Wednesday, and the inquiry call center, which was established last Friday, has received around 20,000 inquiries from customers, the statement said.
Mizuho Bank and Mizuho Corporate Bank were formed by The Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank Ltd., Fuji Bank Ltd. and Industrial Bank of Japan Ltd., which operated computer systems from three different IT suppliers: Fujitsu Ltd., IBM and Hitachi Ltd.
In an effort to achieve a seamless transition when the banks were reorganized, Mizuho tried to interface the three different systems, said Yasushi Miyama, a spokesman for Mizuho Holdings. However, there were errors in the interface programs, and the volume of data the two banks were handling was more than they expected, Miyama said.
Fujitsu declined to comment on the matter Thursday.
Mizuho Bank and Mizuho Corporate Bank plan to integrate their banking functions on a Fujitsu system and a Hitachi system, respectively, in April of next year, Miyama said.
According to local media, there is a possibility that Japan's Financial Service Agency will exercise an order under the country's Banking Law against Mizuho Holding next week, compelling it to improve its business operations.
"We have not decided on that yet," a government official said on Thursday.