The BCA fiasco

The BCA fiasco

Some hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Bank Central
Asia (BCA)'s approximately nine million customers found
themselves unable to carry out transactions at one of the
country's largest private banks on Monday, March 25.

On the first business day of the week, people were lining up
at BCA branches to withdraw money for their families' needs or to
transfer funds for urgent deals, only to find their transactions
could not be completed. The operational fiasco involved not only
BCA's automatic teller machines but also ordinary bank transfer
systems. The cause of the fiasco were computer failures said to
have resulted from a power outage.

Only after 3 p.m., when it was too late in the day to make
transactions, did the computers resume operation, though not
completely.

There were rumors that the disturbance was an act of sabotage
by parties within BCA to show their displeasure with the outcome
of the recent divestment tender of government shares in BCA,
which ended with the Farallon group being named the winner of the
tender. The trouble was seen by some as a message from bank
insiders to the new shareholder.

Residents of large cities, including Jakarta and its environs,
are accustomed to banking matters and tend to be dependent on
banking services. Salaries and most payments are transferred
directly into bank accounts, while most people here have savings
accounts. So an incident like the one on March 25 has adverse
effects on more than just the business world.

In the business community, the inability to make transactions
at BCA definitely slowed the movement of cash, the payment of
debts, etc. Is it right that businesspeople must bear the cost of
default brought about by BCA?

-- Warta Kota, Jakarta