1200 RBS and NatWest branches extend opening hours after computer glitch

Hundreds of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and NatWest branches extended their trading hours once again to cope with the fallout from a computer failure almost a week ago.

Around 1200 branches across the UK opened for the first time ever on a Sunday as staff battled to deal with a backlog of payments following last Tuesday's IT glitch.

On Monday, NatWest parent group RBS said it was extending opening hours at all of its branches in cities and large towns across Scotland.

All branches affected would be extending their opening hours to 8am to 6pm until this Friday as the debacle rolled into its seventh day.

During the past week, clients have seen payments to go awry, holiday and home purchases interrupted and wages have appeared to go missing. NatWest has more than 7.5million personal banking customers but it remains unclear how many have been affected.

More than 1000 NatWest branches were opening their doors from 8am to 7pm today as staff seek to resolve the problems.

Susan Allen, director of customer services at RBS Group, insisted that progress was being made and expressed cautious optimism that RBS and NatWest customer account balances would be largely "back to normal" at the start of the working week.

She added: "The knock-on effects of this technical failure mean there will be bumps in the road. We will do everything we can to minimise further disruption to our customers."

Stephen Hester, chief executive of RBS, has issued a public apology for the chaos and conceded the bank had let down its customers. His attempt to reassure clients followed mounting fears that thousands of people could be hit with penalty charges if their regular payments - including mortgages - were affected.

He said: "I am very sorry for the difficulties people are experiencing. Our customers rely on us day in and day out to get things right, and on this occasion we have let them down. This should not have happened."

The computer software problem started on Tuesday night and reportedly arose following an attempt to install a software update on RBS's payment processing system, which was then corrupted. The group has said this issue has now been fixed.

It has promised that any overdraft fees or charges on current accounts incurred by customers would be automatically waived and has said it would work directly with credit agencies to ensure no-one's credit score was affected.

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