Guaranty Trust Bank, a Nigerian bank with 32 million customers, has apologised to customers for a seven-week service disruption due to its core banking application switch that left customers unable to access their funds.
“Your patience and support during this recent transition to a new core banking system has been nothing short of extraordinary,” the bank said in a statement on Wednesday. The bank also confirmed TechCabal’s earlier reporting that it migrated to Finacle, a core banking application built by Infosys.
It is the first time the bank has publicly apologised for the extended disruption that has caused considerable frustration to its retail customers. The scale of GTBank’s retail customer base and deposits—₦7 trillion—meant the disruption left many Nigerians unable to access their funds or complete transactions.
“I could not access my funds for seven weeks. The banking app did not work at all and I had to use the web app which was inconvenient,” Oyegbile, a GTBank customer, told TechCabal.
GTBank did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
GTBank picked Finacle as its new core banking application in the fourth quarter of 2023 after some of the bank’s top management and tech team visited India to broker a direct partnership with Infosys, TechCabal previously reported.
While the core banking change is critical to improving the bank’s service delivery, the service disruption has broken the fundamental promise of banking—ensuring customers can access their money whenever they need it.
