The entire banking industry is the most backwards, outdated and barely functioning sector in the whole world. I have no clue how we have not yet collapsed the financial system via some hack or basic data loss.
As someone working in fintech (in Europe): I agree. People always say "well at least it's tested and works!" but fintech is pure bullshittery. We wrap shiny new apps over 30 year old legacy systems written in C++ and bank employees need to constantly correct data manually. I know from a bank that has only one employee that knows about the whole system and nobody knows what happens when they retire (is already aged >50). Generally, banks rely on a very small number of (overworked) people that prevent the whole system from collapsing and they will all retire in a few years. Neo-banks and Neo-broker have their own disadvantages (like bad support, etc.) but at least they are forward-thinking.
Everything is also constantly regulated to death (and not the good kind) and banks wait until the very last day (even when regulations were passed at EU-level 6 years (!!) ago) and you then need to rush implementing it in the last month.
After working there for a few years now it's hard to trust any bank. Better not think too hard about it...
> I have no clue how we have not yet collapsed the financial system via some hack or basic data loss.
Banks are pretty good at not losing data. They're also pretty good at layered security.
I mean there's fraud and theft on all levels, but collapse-level events don't come from "a hack or basic data loss". They come from political incompetence and large scale economic events.
Except for that day I logged into Barclays Bank (in the UK) and half the transactions were missing from the last several months of statements.
We're talking maybe 50 transactions just gone from the bank account ledger, which had long since been settled and previously downloaded (that's how I noticed).
To be fair to them, the transactions reappeared a few days later. But it took days, and had me quite worried.
I most certainly am not. But there's certainly fraud in those places too. There is all kinds of frauds within banking, from insider trading to cleverly hidden rounding errors being pocketed by software engineers, and everything in between.
Many/most banks are also issuing banks (which means that they issue V/MC cards to their users). And fundamentally credit and debit cards are a source of credit risk and fraud for those banks.
We have many times. We've ruined lives and literally killed people over it, but we just accept this is how money works. We couldn't possibly consider changing The System because The System is perfect, all-knowing and benevolent. Trust in The System!
Also there's a bunch of really annoying and expensive processes for rich people to get their money back after an error, so they don't see any problem.
Everything is also constantly regulated to death (and not the good kind) and banks wait until the very last day (even when regulations were passed at EU-level 6 years (!!) ago) and you then need to rush implementing it in the last month.
After working there for a few years now it's hard to trust any bank. Better not think too hard about it...