Swedbank customers positive balance turned into negative due to an update
69 comments
Having worked in finance, what surprises me is this stuff doesn't happen more often.
I can’t imagine the stress levels the people having to deal with fixing this issue are going through right now…
I still work in finance. This is nowhere even close to the worst thing I've seen just this week.
What is the worst thing you saw this week?
A bug in dealing with fixed point numbers that caused a price to be off by a factor of 10^8.
Oh I had one of them a number of years ago on a well known e-commerce company’s back end ERP. Financial values were stored in int64 with the decimal position offset stored in a byte separately. The library that handled these values was poorly implemented so if you added values with different offset sizes without converting them and checking for overflow possibilities it’d do all sorts of undefined shit.
I put a simple assertion in as a precondition check and this fired over 20,000 times within an hour of deploying it leading to several months of fixes, horrible discoveries and cheques written.
I put a simple assertion in as a precondition check and this fired over 20,000 times within an hour of deploying it leading to several months of fixes, horrible discoveries and cheques written.
Some code I wrote and the bugs I didn’t knew I wrote into it at the time.
I'm sure most all of us have one or more personal stories like this, but many seem to forget them and focus on the schadenfreude.
Sometimes shit just happens. Sometimes it's blind ignorance and an accident waiting to happen, sometimes it's a bad code review process. Seems to me it's seldom really the fault of the person making the commit.
Sometimes shit just happens. Sometimes it's blind ignorance and an accident waiting to happen, sometimes it's a bad code review process. Seems to me it's seldom really the fault of the person making the commit.
I've worked in finance and compared to other industries we were more careful.
Another article in English:
https://www.thelocal.se/20220429/swedish-bank-it-fault-puts-...
https://www.thelocal.se/20220429/swedish-bank-it-fault-puts-...
And knowing banks, overdraft accounts probably just went nore negative rather than positive.
Though I don't think people would be advertising if they benefited in that way so harder to measure.
Though I don't think people would be advertising if they benefited in that way so harder to measure.
Looks like a simple UI issue, no biggie. They are used to way worse, and barely recoverable, issues created by people without a clue. Horrible sector to work in.
It's not a UI issue. People that are affected by this cannot use their debit cards in stores or withdraw cash at ATMs or banks. People are having to borrow money from friends and colleagues to buy food for the weekend.
Except that people don't have paper money at home any more so friends promise to show up with food boxes for the weekend. We live in a very digital dependent state by choice. It has benefits but also side effects.
This is definitely fuel for Germany and Austria where cash is used everywhere almost exclusively.
It has changed a lot over the last few years. In a typical supermarket in Berlin you will see that the majority of customers pays electronically, these days. Adoption rates may be lower among older people and in rural areas, though.
Berlin is not really as conservative as the rest of Germany, especially that so many foreigners live there which makes it seem so much more progresive and is not representative for the whole ~80 million people country but is more of an outlier (even Germans will tell you that Berlin isn't very 'German'). If you go to smaller cities the situation is vastly different.
In Austria I only see cash being exchanged at the supermarket and when I see someone paying by card or, God forbid, phone or watch, it's most likely a foreigner form another country where cash payments are not popular rather than a local who went cashless.
In Austria I only see cash being exchanged at the supermarket and when I see someone paying by card or, God forbid, phone or watch, it's most likely a foreigner form another country where cash payments are not popular rather than a local who went cashless.
Here in Dresden - where "conservative" can sometimes feel like a charitable understatement - it's pretty mixed, based on my observations, I'd probably estimate about 50/50 card vs cash, at least in the supermarket, with a smattering of people using phones or something fancier. There's also a lot more self checkouts in supermarkets now, and most people who use self checkouts tend to also use card in my experience.
Here in Cologne I see most people paying with debit cards, with the exception of very old people.
Cologne is also a bit bigger, out in the smaller towns around Cologne they still pay with cash most of the time. But last year I did notice an increase of card payment at the supermarket. At the local baker and butchers you can forget about it though, they don't even have a terminal for it.
I think the change can be observed through retailers like Aldi now accepting card payments, which was not true until very recentrly.
Sadly, we'll never get a post-mortem analysis. Good luck to all those affected and I hope for them that the bank follows standard practices when handling transactions bookkeeping. The balance should be easy to recalculate.
We might not get a detailed, technical post-mortem, but I expect someone (the bank, a government regulator) will want to know what happened and why, and there will be some sort of report.
Here's an example reporting on an IT failure at a British bank: https://home.barclays/content/dam/home-barclays/documents/ci...
Here's an example reporting on an IT failure at a British bank: https://home.barclays/content/dam/home-barclays/documents/ci...
Just realized if it's not UI, then:
Current balance: -1,000,000.
Debit: Spent money at Koenigsegg (a Swedish car brand), new balance: -1 billion.
Patch: flip - to +: new balance: 1 billion
Current balance: -1,000,000.
Debit: Spent money at Koenigsegg (a Swedish car brand), new balance: -1 billion.
Patch: flip - to +: new balance: 1 billion
Not just a visual bug.
People tried buying things and had their purchases denied.
People tried buying things and had their purchases denied.
Sounds like you might have some entertaining stories?
Once upon a time in the dark ages of IT a Dutch bank made a mistake in their interest calculations. One alert customer noticed the error and notified the bank but that was not before 100's of thousands of people received papers with the wrong amounts on them (in favor of the bank). That took a while to correct.
I worked at one FI in Australia that shipped a bug that impacted interest payments, except in this case they used the wrong 'from' date: the account opening date instead of the last interest date.
Some long-standing accounts received very large cheques (it was the 90s, so yes, cheques).
The FI gave the customers the choice to either return the cheques or have future interest payments withheld. Surprisingly the vast majority simply returned the cheques.
We had to write additional code to clawback the interest on the other accounts. I doubt if the FI would have had any recourse if people had just closed their accounts and kept the cheque but to the best of my knowledge nobody did.
Some long-standing accounts received very large cheques (it was the 90s, so yes, cheques).
The FI gave the customers the choice to either return the cheques or have future interest payments withheld. Surprisingly the vast majority simply returned the cheques.
We had to write additional code to clawback the interest on the other accounts. I doubt if the FI would have had any recourse if people had just closed their accounts and kept the cheque but to the best of my knowledge nobody did.
At some point they stop being entertaining and you just want to forget :)
Most popular bank in Sweden. Keep in mind that you don't use cash in Sweden.
Maybe popular, but from the several scandals surrounding that bank in the last few years, you should have changed bank long ago.
(Most recently laundering Russian oligarch money iirc)
(Most recently laundering Russian oligarch money iirc)
Deutsche Bank still is going strong, despite being involved in virtually every scandal of the last decades - hell their offices got raided again just an hour ago [1].
Ordinary consumers don't give a damn about shady dealings of their banks, mostly because unlike phone numbers bank account numbers are not portable. Yes there exist regulations that banks have to assist with direct debit and automated order migration, but it's nevertheless a hassle to switch banks.
[1] https://www.t-online.de/finanzen/news/unternehmen-verbrauche...
Ordinary consumers don't give a damn about shady dealings of their banks, mostly because unlike phone numbers bank account numbers are not portable. Yes there exist regulations that banks have to assist with direct debit and automated order migration, but it's nevertheless a hassle to switch banks.
[1] https://www.t-online.de/finanzen/news/unternehmen-verbrauche...
My Swedbank mortgage agreement even goes as far as to require that I use my account with them as the primary salary account.
Does Swedbank require you to have your primary salary account with them to have your mortgage, or do they require you to have an account with them to receive a discount on your mortgage? B/c those are 2 different things... Thanks in advance for the clarification <3
The mortgage rate calculation is intentionally opaque (at least the bank clerks lead you to believe that) and it becomes just one of a multitude of criteria to evaluate my risk of default (and the bank having an advance estimation of any changes in my financial well-being).
This paragraph probably can be contested, if done in advance of signing the agreement, but if every other bank you approach have such a condition (to be fair, the only other bank I approached was SEB, also Scandinavian bank) spending time on arguing about trivialities while selling my soul to get an even worse rate did not seem like a worthwhile pursuit.
This paragraph probably can be contested, if done in advance of signing the agreement, but if every other bank you approach have such a condition (to be fair, the only other bank I approached was SEB, also Scandinavian bank) spending time on arguing about trivialities while selling my soul to get an even worse rate did not seem like a worthwhile pursuit.
There is not a particular interest rate discount tied to this factor- once negotiated, it becomes a part of agreement. And negotiating this requirement beforehad would to submit another mortgage application.
I don't think any banks here allow you just to have a mortgage agreement without an account at them- they deduct the monthly payment automatically. It might be possible with other types of loans, but I don't think it can be done with mortgages.
I don't think any banks here allow you just to have a mortgage agreement without an account at them- they deduct the monthly payment automatically. It might be possible with other types of loans, but I don't think it can be done with mortgages.
Why would you ever sign that?
You get a lower interest rate. Banks generally can't require you to have an account there to get a mortgage, however they can give 'discounts' to customers that also have their accounts at the bank. Close your account and you are no longer a customer and lose the discount.
Banks frame it as "it's one of the factors used by our opaque black box algorithm to determine your rate". To find out the exact weight of every factor beforehand, I would have to submit N applications, processing of which is on the order of a week or so.
When I was 'shopping' for a loan (in Sweden) I got an explicit price list. As in "our base rate is X%, if both of you move your main account here we'll offer you Y% and if also you move your home and car insurance to the insurance company we own then we'll offer you Z%"
That... seems illegal.
> laundering
If you try to find a bank that isn't filled with criminal minds, you will never find one.
If you try to find a bank that isn't filled with criminal minds, you will never find one.
Most popular tends to go in opposite direction of quality - people look at the fees heavily and tend to go to cheapest solutions.
Now it can be claimed that cheap != low quality and there are certainly some exceptions out there, but generally you get what you par for.
Now it can be claimed that cheap != low quality and there are certainly some exceptions out there, but generally you get what you par for.
What's a good bank in Sweden, if I may ask? My personal experience is several hours (literally) wasted with Nordea, each time ending with something trivial not working (as someone new in Sweden, i.e only setting up bankID). So far, my personal experience with banking here is several orders of magnitude worse than in Germany, even (or because) everyone is proud on it being soo much more digitalized.
I'm reasonably happy with SEB so far. I originally tried to get an account with SwedBank but they weren't interested until I had a personnummer (legally they're not supposed to refuse on this basis!) SEB were a lot more cooperative and set me up with a basic account (deposit for salary checks plus an ATM card) quickly. Most things seem to be fine through the website.
The one time I had to do some non-standard stuff they were pretty slow and a little disorganised, but it still seemed better than the UK banks I've used previously.
The one time I had to do some non-standard stuff they were pretty slow and a little disorganised, but it still seemed better than the UK banks I've used previously.
SEB is also quite a boomer bank? Still stuck with legacy numeric "usernames", manual limit changes from the office etc..
We went with Handelsbanken, because they were the first that let us sign up. So far seems OK. but I've not really done a detailed comparison.
I've been very happy with SEB and have found their customer service pretty great, even with pretty complex requests.
The being said, living in Sweden before you get your digital ID set up and everything sorted out in all the right databases seems to be a massive pain. All my non-Swedish colleagues at work have bureaucratic horror stories of their first months in the country.
The being said, living in Sweden before you get your digital ID set up and everything sorted out in all the right databases seems to be a massive pain. All my non-Swedish colleagues at work have bureaucratic horror stories of their first months in the country.
I wouldn't say that. SEB is probably the most popular.
Not at all? Even in Norway, cash is still used to a small degree.
Sweden's probably even more cashless than Norway.
Even if you have cash, which most people don't, it's hard to spend. Grocery stores still take it so it would actually be useful in this situation, but other than grocery stores I struggle to think of any places in my city that accept cash. Maybe some bigger outlets do, not sure, but restaurants, cafes, takeaway places, small specialty stores and the like certainly do not take cash.
Even if you have cash, which most people don't, it's hard to spend. Grocery stores still take it so it would actually be useful in this situation, but other than grocery stores I struggle to think of any places in my city that accept cash. Maybe some bigger outlets do, not sure, but restaurants, cafes, takeaway places, small specialty stores and the like certainly do not take cash.
Visiting Malmö I see restaurants with "card only" signs on the door and in the menu.
Denmark has taken measures to require most businesses to accept cash, but Sweden doesn't seem to have done that. I keep ~1000DKK at home for emergencies, but I haven't purchased anything with cash for... um... a long time. Perhaps once in the last year.
Denmark has taken measures to require most businesses to accept cash, but Sweden doesn't seem to have done that. I keep ~1000DKK at home for emergencies, but I haven't purchased anything with cash for... um... a long time. Perhaps once in the last year.
I haven't handled physical cash for probably ten years. They redesigned the bills around 2015 and to be honest I'm not even sure how they look anymore.
I've been living in Sweden for 6 years. Never touched any Swedish cash. I don't even know what it looks like.
You do, today....
Irregular events can’t be a barometer though. On the other side of the fence, India also rendered 80+% of its cash unusable overnight.
Had to pay my best friends rent and electricity bill because she ended up with -400000 in her account. It’ll be restored but having to go these hoops sure doesn’t build confidence in the banking system
> This guy went from having a million SEK
That's not clear from the text or video.
That's not clear from the text or video.
Yeah, I believe it's very unlikely that this young guy had this much on his account. You do not get rich in Sweden.
It's really not an exorbitant amount of money, but even if he had it it seems unlikely he kept it in a savings account on Swedbank.
1M Sek == ~97K euro... not absurd
yet there are more billionaires per capita in Sweden than the USA.
I live in Malmo, not an expensive or high paying city; I have at one point had more than a million SEK in my bank (which is equivalent to about 100,000 USD), I was 27 at the time.
Certainly not impossible, no reason to be skeptical.
I live in Malmo, not an expensive or high paying city; I have at one point had more than a million SEK in my bank (which is equivalent to about 100,000 USD), I was 27 at the time.
Certainly not impossible, no reason to be skeptical.
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This guy went from having a million SEK to million SEK in debt: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/marko-ligger-1-3-miljoner-minus-pa-kontot-sanslost