GTBank announces temporary service disruption as it migrates to new banking application Friday 

By Omowumi Omotosho

Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) has notified its customers of an impending migration of its core banking application system to a new one, which would cause a temporary disruption in banking services.

The transition to a new and robust suite of Finacle Core Banking Application Systems is set to commence on Friday, October 11, 2024, and is expected to be completed by Monday, October 14, 2024.

According to a notice issued by the bank, all GTBank branches nationwide will close early to customers at 12:00 p.m. on Friday, October 11th, and will reopen at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, October 14th.

Furthermore, there will be temporary disruptions in the bank’s digital banking services for 11 hours, beginning at 10:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 13th, and ending at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, October 14th.

During this period, the Bank said its customers would still be able to perform limited transactions via GTBank’s digital channels, including transfers, bill payments, and airtime/data purchases, while other services would be unavailable.

Benefits of the transition 

While noting that the transition was part of its commitment to bringing meaningful improvements to the lives of its customers by leveraging technology, GTBank in the notice said:

“Overall, this transition will allow us to drive digital transformation to achieve insights-driven and frictionless interactions at all our Customer Touchpoints; enhancing the quality of customer experience we can deliver to you.

“We will keep you updated on our progress as we work towards making your banking experience simpler.

“We apologize for every inconvenience this may cause and ask for your understanding.”

What you should know

Many Nigerian banks are now switching to new core banking platforms to enhance their services delivery.

Following recent service disruptions experienced by some customers of the banks that have embarked on the transition, Nairametrics recently reported that more disruptions are looming as other banks are warming up to switch systems.

Customers of tier-2 Sterling Bank were the first to experience the disruptions that lasted for days earlier in September as the lender commenced the migration of its systems from T24 to SEABaaS, a new custom-built core banking application locally developed.

Similarly, customers of Zenith Bank woke to a harrowing experience of service outage on October 1. The Bank would later announce it was carrying out a ‘routine IT maintenance’ the results of which the customers are yet to recover from as of the time of filling this report.

Zenith is migrating its system from Phoenix, a software developed by London-based Finastra, to Oracle’s Flexcube.

Industry experts have said that the process of migrating to a new core banking application is tedious and may take a while for any bank to stabilize after the migration.