César Ferrari, financial superintendent, at Asobancaria.
Photo: Asobancaria
From the Asobancaria congress, César Ferrari, financial superintendent, said that the situation that Bancolombia is going through is “overwhelming.” The bank had scheduled maintenance in the early hours of holiday Monday (June 3), which was to end at 7:00 am, however, since that day the virtual channels have presented failures, including the application.
The bank explained that a technical failure occurred, apologized to its clients and maintained that the “technology team, together with strategic allies, has been working tirelessly since that moment to solve the failures.”
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“We continue to investigate what is happening, they have assured us that this will be recovered quickly and we hope that this will happen. In any case, that does not prevent us from continuing in the line of banking supervision with respect to things that should not happen, that implies that measures are taken from the bank that will be supervised by us so that these issues are not reproduced again. in the short term,” the superintendent said.
Faced with questions about whether there will be specific measures, Ferrari maintained that the Superfinanciera’s measures are not hasty or improvised, but rather the result of strict supervision. When asked if there will be an investigation, he responded “of course,” that “it is not about hiding anyone or protecting anyone.”
He added that an appropriate intervention is being made in compliance with the supervisory role and that, in fact, they have a “chat” with the bank in which they are informing them of all the news. “The investigation has been going on for a long time,” she added.
Jonathan Malagón, president of Asobancaria, said that the number of transactions in the country has grown significantly: currently 30,000 are being made per minute. “Any type of technological alteration or failure has a large material impact on citizens. In context, last year was historic for Colombia because of every 100,000 transactions that were made, we only had nine complaints. Five years ago there were 20, we halved the number of complaints about transactions in the sector.”
What can users do?
For now, Bancolombia recommends that users make purchases with their debit and credit cards directly at establishments or withdraw cash at banking correspondents and ATMs.
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“We can firmly affirm that our clients’ information and money have always been safe and that the failure lies in our operating system. At no time have we been violated. (…) We are really very embarrassed by how long the solution is taking us. “We have been investing for several years in the technological renewal necessary to ensure providing the financial and non-financial services that Colombians need and we continue on that path,” Bancolombia said in a statement.
