Want to know how much website downtime costs, and the impact it can have on your business?
Find out everything you need to know in our new uptime monitoring whitepaper 2021
In a world where we are so reliant on technology for everything, from doing our weekly grocery shopping to online banking, it’s no surprise that when something goes wrong, it has a huge domino effect impact. The pressures on apps and online platforms in 2022 is so high that we almost solely depend on them for all of our day to day activities. It’s no surprise, therefore, that when the banking apps suffered partial downtime in March, it felt like Armageddon.
Let’s set the scene a bit here.
When was the last time you popped into a Lloyds bank and transferred money to someone? Or, when was the last time you deposited cash to a cashier in a NatWest branch? I can almost hear your brain whirring from here, trying to figure out when this nostalgic moment last took place. But if I was now to ask you when was the last time you logged into your online banking app, I’m sure the answer would be almost automatic. So what happened when you couldn’t?
It’s estimated that over 18 million people in the UK use online banking. So when the Lloyds, Halifax, and the Bank of Scotland online banking platforms all suffered partial downtime, millions of people were unable to access their accounts properly. The biggest downside? All 3 of these banks are managed by the Lloyds Banking Group. And the most worrying part for customers was seeing “N/A” against their “available funds”. Scary.
It took Lloyds a while to release a statement about the issue, which seemingly came after the influx of comments on social media directed at them. A spokesperson then released the following:
‘We know some of our customers had issues accessing mobile and online banking for a short time this morning.
‘We’re sorry about this and both our website and app are now back to normal.’
What caused the downtime?
Lloyds Banking Group hasn’t released any information about why their online banking platforms went down or what caused it but with such a tremendous amount of reliance now on them, it bodes the question, should they be doing more to make sure this doesn’t happen?
According to the banking group, online banking use has gone up over 25% in the past two years so with this added usage, you’d need excellent website monitoring in place to ensure that any downtime is picked up as quickly as possible.
The solution? Enter StatusCake (bet you didn’t see that coming!). We will monitor your website for uptime, page speed, server, domain, and any SSL issues so you can always have the best performing website possible. The cherry on the cake is you can take a free trial of our paid plans or enjoy a free for life account. Almost sounds too good to be true. Why not try it?
StatusCake Team
Share this
More from StatusCake
Buy vs Build in the Age of AI (Part 3)
5 min read Autonomous Code, Trust Boundaries, and Why Governance Now Matters More Than Ever In Part 1, we looked at how AI has reduced the cost of building monitoring tools. Then in Part 2, we explored the operational and economic burden of owning them. Now we need to talk about something deeper. Because the real shift isn’t
James Barnes
March 18, 2026
Buy vs Build in the Age of AI (Part 2)
6 min read The Real Cost of Owning Monitoring Isn’t Code — It’s Everything Else In Part 1, we explored how AI has dramatically reduced the cost of building monitoring tooling. That much is clear. You can scaffold uptime checks quickly, generate alert logic in minutes, and set-up dashboards faster than most teams used to schedule the kickoff
James Barnes
March 11, 2026
Buy vs Build in the Age of AI (Part 1)
5 min read AI Has Made Building Monitoring Easy. It Hasn’t Made Owning It Any Easier. A few months ago, I spoke to an engineering manager who proudly told me they had rebuilt their monitoring stack over a long weekend. They’d used AI to scaffold synthetic checks. They’d generated alert logic with dynamic thresholds. They’d then wired everything
James Barnes
March 4, 2026
Alerting Is a Socio-Technical System
3 min read In the previous posts, we’ve looked at how alert noise emerges from design decisions, why notification lists fail to create accountability, and why alerts only work when they’re designed around a clear outcome. Taken together, these ideas point to a broader conclusion. That alerting is not just a technical system, it’s a socio-technical one. Alerting
James Barnes
February 25, 2026
Designing Alerts for Action
3 min read In the first two posts of this series, we explored how alert noise emerges from design decisions, and why notification lists fail to create accountability when responsibility is unclear. There’s a deeper issue underneath both of those problems. Many alerting systems are designed without being clear about the outcome they’re meant to produce. When teams
James Barnes
February 18, 2026
A Notification List Is Not a Team
3 min read In the previous post, we looked at how alert noise is rarely accidental. It’s usually the result of sensible decisions layered over time, until responsibility becomes diffuse and response slows. One of the most persistent assumptions behind this pattern is simple. If enough people are notified, someone will take responsibility. After more than fourteen years
James Barnes
February 11, 2026