銀行老舊IT系統不堪重負 Banks' ageing IT systems buckle under strain
Igor Feitoza, a Brazilian-born entrepreneur, left an angry message on his bank’s Facebook page this week.
不久前的某日，巴西出生的企業家伊戈爾費託薩(Igor Feitoza)在其銀行的Facebook頁面上留下一條憤憤不平的留言。
“I want to see if you guys will pay my overdue bills and my employees as I can’t access my money which last Friday to pay them,” he wrote following a “ridiculous” three hours spent at the bank.
他寫道：“我上週五剛存的錢，準備支付賬單和員工的工資，結果現在卻沒法取錢。我倒要看看，你們會不會支付我的過期賬單和員工工資。”在此之前，他在這家銀行耗費了“荒唐的”三個小時。
Mr Feitoza is not one of the many frustrated Royal Bank of Scotland customers hit by the latest technology failure this week. He is a client of Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the country’s biggest bank by market capitalisation, which had its reputation as one of the most digitally advanced lenders tarnished by an outage in its payment and online systems late last week.
費託薩並不是那周受到蘇格蘭皇家銀行(RBS)技術故障打擊的衆多不滿客戶之一，而是澳大利亞市值最大的銀行——澳大利亞聯邦銀行(Commonwealth Bank of Australia，簡稱CBA)的客戶。該行號稱數字化程度最高的銀行之一，但那周發生的支付和在線系統故障給這一名聲蒙上陰影。
As well as provoking outbursts on social media, the technology glitches at RBS, which caused some 600,000 payments and direct debits to go missing, and CBA underline how the world’s biggest banks are often failing to get to grips with the growing demands being placed on their IT platforms.
RBS和CBA發生的技術故障除了在社交媒體上引發大量吐槽以外，還凸顯出這樣一個現實：全球最大銀行經常搞不定其IT平臺承受的越來越高的要求。RBS的技術故障竟然導致大約60萬筆支付和直接扣賬交易不知去向。
Banks spent about $188bn on IT last year and that figure is expected to grow at close to 5 per cent a year, taking it above $200bn by next year, according to Celent, the research company.
研究公司Celent的數據顯示，各銀行去年的信息技術支出大約爲1880億美元，預計這一數字會以每年近5%的速度遞增，明年將達到2000億美元以上。
Many banks, such as RBS, are plagued by computer systems that have been built up over several decades through acquisitions and new product launches to form a costly and complex patchwork of systems.
像RBS這樣的許多銀行，受到幾十年期間逐漸積累的電腦系統的困擾，這些系統可能來自併購，也可能來自新產品推出，它們構成了一個成本高昂的複雜的系統大雜燴。
“A lot of these programmes get three-quarters done,” says a senior technology executive at one of the largest US banks. “It’s one of these technical debt problems that builds up over the course of time. If you have one thing happen it might cause the whole thing to fall down.”
美國最大銀行之一的一名技術高管表示：“此類程序有許多隻能執行四分之三的功能。這就是那種技術‘債務’，它們隨着時間的推移而不斷積累。一旦出點什麼問題，會導致整個系統崩潰。”
The cost of maintaining these often ageing and unwieldy systems eats up three-quarters of banks’ IT spending, according to Celent. That leaves only a quarter to spend on innovations to keep up with the rapidly emerging threat from the many technology groups and start-ups trying to steal market share in areas such as payments.
據Celent介紹，這些往往老化而不聽話的系統的維護成本消耗了銀行IT支出的四分之三。也就是說，只有四分之一的支出被投入創新技術，以應對正在迅速出現的來自衆多高科技集團和初創企業的威脅，後者試圖在支付等領域竊取銀行的市場份額。
“For a sector that spends significantly more on technology than most other sectors in the world, it is the least innovative, so there is a paradox here,” says Bill Michaels, head of financial services in Europe at KPMG.
畢馬威(KPMG)歐洲金融服務部門主管比爾邁克爾(Bill Michael)表示：“對於一個技術設備上投入顯著超過世界上其他多數產業的行業，這是最缺乏創新精神的做法。所以說這裏存在一個矛盾。”
As many banks struggle in the post-financial crisis environment to generate returns above their cost of capital, these spiralling costs and inefficiencies are becoming increasingly unacceptable to both managers and shareholders.
由於很多銀行在金融危機後的環境中難以獲得高於資金成本的回報，不論對銀行管理人員還是股東來說，這些扶搖直上的成本和低效率正變得越來越不可接受。
RBS, which last year paid a record fine to regulators for a bigger systems outage in 2012, hoped to solve its problems by replacing its core processing engine at a cost of 750m. But in a recent interview, chief executive Ross McEwanconceded there was still a big job to reduce the number of systems and applications at RBS from more than 3,000.
去年，RBS曾因2012年一次更大規模的系統癱瘓，向監管機構支付了創紀錄的罰金。該行曾希望投入7.5億英鎊更換其核心處理引擎，以便徹底解決問題。然而，在最近一次訪談中，該行首席執行官羅斯麥克尤恩(Ross McEwan)承認，要把RBS系統和應用軟件的數量從3000餘個降下來，還需要做很多工作。
Asian banks spend more than Europeans or US rivals on IT; their spending is growing faster; and more of their IT money is going on new projects than on maintenance. However, they are hardly glitch-free.
亞洲的銀行投入信息技術的資源高於歐美競爭對手。它們的支出增長更快，而且它們的信息技術支出有更大一部分投向新項目，而不是用於維護舊系統。然而，它們也很難做到零故障運營。
In January, a problem in the system linking accounts at Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the country’s largest lender, with securities brokerages, disrupted Rmb4.9bn in fund transfers, affecting nearly 55,000 customers at 90 brokerages.
今年1月，鏈接中國工商銀行(ICBC)賬戶與券商賬戶的一個系統發生故障，導致49億元人民幣的資金轉移中斷，影響90家券商的近5.5萬用戶。工行是中國最大的銀行。
As regulators make ever growing demands on banks to provide them with vast amounts of data covering areas from stress tests to anti-money laundering checks, banks are racing to keep their systems up to speed.
隨着監管機構對銀行提出越來越高的要求，讓銀行提交海量數據（涵蓋從壓力測試到反洗錢檢查的方方面面），各銀行正競相確保各自的系統跟得上。
Deutsche Bank insiders blamed its failure in this year’s US stress test on years of under-investment in IT that made it unable to meet US regulators’ demands.
德意志銀行(Deutsche Bank)的內部人士將該行今年在美國壓力測試中“不及格”歸咎於多年來對信息技術投資不足，導致該行達不到美國監管機構的要求。
Concern is growing about cyber security after high-profile hacking attacks, such as last year’s theft of data on 76m customers from computer systems at JPMorgan Chase.
在出現多起備受關注的黑客攻擊事件之後，人們對網絡安全的關注日益提高。去年，曾有7600萬客戶的資料從摩根大通(JPMorgan Chase)的電腦系統中失竊，這是黑客攻擊的一個事例。
Executives say this focus on cyber security is a catalyst for change, pushing banks to simplify and upgrade their IT systems. “Making something secure requires it to be consistent and clean and up to date and well managed,” says the US tech executive.
高管們表示，對網絡安全的這種關注是推動變革的催化劑，它迫使銀行簡化和升級其IT系統。上述美國技術高管表示：“要確保安全，就需要做到一致、乾淨、及時更新至最新狀態，並得到優良的管理。”
James O’Neill, senior analyst at Celent, predicts that within a decade most big banks will have switched from using costly mainframe computers for overnight processing of customer data to using much more flexible cloud-based services.
Celent資深分析師詹姆斯攠尼爾(James O'Neill)預計，十年內，多數大銀行將從使用成本高昂的大型計算機對客戶數據進行隔夜處理，轉向使用靈活得多的雲端服務。
If nothing else, the shortage of developers trained in the Cobol programming language that drives most bank mainframes will force them to make the switch. Australia’s CBA has moved to a cloud-based system, while Deutsche recently outsourced many of its applications to a cloud provider.
即使沒有其他推動力，受過COBOL語言訓練的開發人員的短缺也將迫使銀行完成這一轉型。COBOL語言目前驅動着多數銀行大型計算機。澳大利亞的CBA銀行已轉向一種基於雲技術的系統，而德意志銀行最近也將許多應用程序外包給一家雲計算服務提供商。
“The story about legacy systems impeding innovation is a bit oversold,” says Mr O’Neill. “I’m not saying they will go on for ever, but they have done a pretty decent job of supplying new products and services.”
奧尼爾表示：“遺留系統阻礙創新的報道有點言過其實。我並沒有說它們會永遠運行下去，而是說它們在提供新產品和服務方面做得還不錯。”
Like many sectors, however, banks are realising the need to harness the power of “big data” to offer better digital services to their customers.
不過，和許多行業一樣，銀行正在認識到需要利用“大數據”的威力，爲客戶提供更好的數字化服務。
Mr Michael at KPMG says his banking clients know the stakes are high. “They have seen what technology has done to music and home shopping and so far they have been relatively slow to adapt — but the longer they wait the harder it will get.”
畢馬威的邁克爾表示，他的銀行客戶知道這方面的工作事關重大。“他們看到了技術在音樂和家庭購物領域的威力。迄今他們的適應相對緩慢，但他們等待的時間越長，就越難完成這一調整。”
