First Bank to shut down operations Thursday, Friday
Are you a First Bank customer? You may have to make contingency arrangements for banking needs as your bank will shut down operations from Thursday to Monday.
Reason: upgrade of its core banking application from Finacle 7 to Finacle 10, which will ensure easier and faster customer services and experience.
As a result of this system-wide transmission, all bank's more than 700 branches nationwide will be closed to customers.
Besides, Point of Sale transactions and transaction alerts by Short Message Service will be disabled and all card services, except Visa prepaid card, will not be available via Quick Teller and the Web.
According to the bank, 'All transactions that will impact on the banking platform e.g. settlements, interbank (RTGS, NEFT, FIP) inflows, will not be available.'
Two windows of transaction that will suffer minimal disruption in the period are Automated Teller Machine and online banking services. The bank said skeletal services would be available on its ATMs throughout the migration period until 5pm on Sunday, and would be restored at 6am on Monday
It said further that online banking services would also be available until 5pm on Sunday and be restored at 6am on Monday.
The bank's mobile money mobile money services will be available throughout the migration period.
In order not to take its customers by surprise, the bank had sent out SMS and email notifications to its customers on the development. It sought for the customers' understanding and apologized in advance the inconveniences that they would suffer as a result of the system disruption.
.The Group Managing Director in an n open letter to the customers, thanked them for their continued loyalty to the bank.
He wrote, 'I write to thank you for your continuous patronage and inform you of our plan to upgrade our core banking application as part of the ongoing transformation of the bank.
'I am particularly excited at the prospect of this milestone as it represents the opportunity to significantly transform our service delivery to you in many respects, while also supporting our plans for the introduction of new and innovative products as we anticipate your every banking need.
'This is a major project and on account of the technical requirements, we regret that there will be some disruptions to our services for about three days, while the upgrade is ongoing.'
Some of the bank's customers spoken to claimed ignorant of the development. They said that they had not received any of such a message from the bank.
One of them, who refused to volunteer his name, said that he had lodged a cheque (Tuesday evening) and was expecting to do some significant transactions on Thursday.