Santander 'Internal Server Error' Business Customers Locked Out?

By: Nadeem_Walayat

The banks in Cyprus have been closed since 18th March with each proposed date for re-opening of the banks with strict capital controls being extended every few days as the Cypriot central bank enacts its policy to steal depositor funds to the tune of 40% of deposits of over 100,000 euro's in at least Cyprus's two largest banks.

The risk of contagion spreading across the euro-zone banks has increasingly been witnessing flight of depositor funds out of their respective big banks as Cyprus has now set the precedent that bank deposits are at real risk of being stolen, which for the likes of Spain means its biggest bank Santander.

Whilst day to day banking may continue for ordinary retail customers of Santander. However the same cannot be said for business customers who tend to have larger balances on account and who when trying to log in since late Friday may have been met with the following message of routine maintenance that has remained in force since late Friday.

Similarly transactions that took place on Friday 22nd March,before the 'maintenance' struck appear to have been frozen as illustrated by the fact that I personally transferred out £16,000 mid Friday afternoon via the Faster Payment service that would supposedly arrive at its destination within 2 hours (4pm), instead over 4 days later the payment has still failed to arrive with no ability to log in and check on the status of transactions which amounts to a defacto bank holiday for at least some business customers.

Furthermore there is no sign of return to normal business as illustrated by the below screen grab of a very recent attempt to log in -

This illustrates the risks that the whole banking sector poses in that when it shuts down it will be in an instant, and then it will be too late to draw your funds out so you really need to act well beforehand. And certainly do not pay attention to any soothing words out of the Bank of England as illustrated by the fact that one of the last statements out of the central bank of Cyprus prior to freezing the banking system was that depositors money was safe in Cypriot banks.

Nadeem Walayat

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

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Nadeem Walayat has over 25 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem's forward looking analysis focuses on UK inflation, economy, interest rates and housing market. He is the author of four ebook's in the The Inflation Mega-Trend and Stocks Stealth Bull Market series.that can be downloaded for Free.

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