Japan's Financial Services Agency has ordered Mizuho Bank to review its group-wide IT systems and contingency planning strategy and rectify defects in its corporate culture following a major technology failure in March.
The public upbraiding of the bank by the regulator follows an investigation into a series of failures that knocked out the bank's online and ATM services after a flood of tsunami and earthquake-related donations overwhelmed the group's IT systems.
The FSA's investigation uncovered serious defects in the bank's contingency planning and risk management arrangements that rendered it unable to deal with the aftermath of the initial failure and reassure its customer base.
The report identifies a string of failures in the bank's response to the emerging crisis, including the absence of an inter-group reporting system, customer information programme or contingency planning drill, and inadequate investment in IT and staff training.
The bank last encountered a major disruption to its systems in 2002, when its ATMs and online systems were disabled during merger integration work.
The FSA report into the latest malfunction, concludes: "Though the Mizuho Financial Group was supposed to engage in developing a sense of unity as a group as one of the improvement measures in response to the system failure in 2002, the engagement is not sufficient and problems are still identified in its corporate culture."
Last week, the bank revealed a major shake-up in its management and operations, which saw the departure of its president and head of IT and a promised overhaul of its disparate IT systems onto a single group-wide platform.