On 19th July 2024, several online services simply stopped working. Dubbed a global outage at the time, it was later reported that service provider CrowdStrike introduced an update to its system that severely crippled the operations of thousands of companies worldwide.

This resulted in numerous flight delays across the globe, but closer to home, meant services reliant on stable internet connectivity, were inaccessible.

One of the companies affected by the CrowdStrike outage, was Capitec Bank. To the financial institution’s credit, it was quick to communicate the situation to both customers and media alike, being one of the first in the country to do so while others remained silent.

While it remains to be seen how many customers CrowdStrike lost following the incident, especially as it only took a simple Template Type update in Windows to bring parts of the internet to its knees, we had the opportunity to speak with Capitec Bank’s Divisional executive for Retail Client Experience Delivery, Blessing Mgaga, at the AWS Summit Johannesburg 2024 this week for more insight.

We wanted to find out whether Mgaga and his team learned anything about Capitec’s own systems following the CrowdStrike outage, and whether it has resulted in any changes to the way it operates in the weeks since.

As it turns out, with the situation very much out of its hands in terms of remedying the situation, Capitec rather focused on effective communications and ensuring that all key stakeholders were aware of the evolving situation at the time.

“I think there is two things to talk about,” explained Mgaga.

“One, is that we were really encouraged internally by some of our business continuity processes that immediately fell into place when we needed them the most. I think it just confirmed the disciplines we put in place for ourselves to say when we have a critical issue, regardless of whether it’s third-party related or not, we put our client first, we put our critical team members, everybody stops everything and focuses on first making our clients aware of what’s going on, and how do we cover the client’s service,” he outlined.

“What I mean by that is, yes, we had a technical issue from a third-party that impacted our ecosystem, but it was more the organising of our marketing teams and technology teams, getting all our executives on the same call, working out our business continuity plan, and covering the services,” he continued.

Here Mgaga noted that this is not something that the company learned per se from the CrowdStrike outage, but rather it reaffirmed the processes that it had put in place, and served as a significant test of how effectively they were implemented.

Moving forward, he noted that “constantly putting the client first” is where his team will focus their efforts.

“You agree with your supply chain about the importance of putting the client first, and those lessons are things we continue to discuss. From that point of view, it’s one element that continue to ask our supply chain to consider, because we all need to serve those clients, not just Capitec,” he ended.

A recent, or rather forthcoming, example of putting the client first is the announcement of a new in-app zero-rated calling feature for customer queries. It is expected to rollout over the next couple months, and when it does, it will be an industry first among banking apps.

In an event such as the CrowdStrike outage, having direct access to a person representing your bank, should prove vital for many.

[Image – Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash]