Three major UK banks are paying customers a goodwill gesture of around £40 after a data blunder. More than 80,000 customers of Lloyds, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland may receive the payment following a glitch in March that exposed their data.
Details of the Data Breach
A letter from Lloyds published by the Treasury Committee revealed that up to 447,936 customers were affected in total. However, a follow-up letter identified an additional 80,508 customers impacted. The bank stated: "We also issued an alert on the app home screen to these 80,508 joint account holders, with a small number of exceptions based on particular customer circumstances."
Compensation and Goodwill Payments
The banking group has paid out more than £200,000 after approximately 450,000 people were affected by the IT glitch. As of March 24, Lloyds has paid £201,000 to 5,250 people and an additional £62,000 in goodwill payments to 1,625 people. This averages around £38 per customer, but no fixed sum has been settled, meaning some customers could receive more.
The bank emphasized that it has not found any customers who suffered financial loss from the incident, so no compensation has been made on that basis. However, Lloyds may make goodwill payments for distress and inconvenience in individual cases.
Cause of the Glitch
Lloyds confirmed the incident was caused by a "software defect" from an overnight IT update in March, which allowed customers to see other users' transactions on their accounts.
