Are you prepared for you financial institutions’ next service outage?

It’s common for banks and other financial institutions to perform routine maintenance, which can sometimes result in some of their services being inaccessible. Companies usually perform maintenance when they feel customers will be the least impacted. Overnight and weekend maintenance schedules are quite common.

Being unable to access financial services during a service outage can result in you losing money if you’re not prepared. As an example, let’s say that you go to your bank’s site with the intention to schedule a bill that’s due in just a few days. It’s the last day for you to schedule the payment through your bank’s site and have the payment arrive on time. But, your bank is performing scheduled maintenance and you’re unable to schedule the payment. If your payment is late, the creditor could assess fees to your account and/or report the late payment to credit bureaus.

This example highlights the importance of having a backup payment option and paying your bills far enough in advance. By doing so, you can minimize the impact that service outages have on you. There are even more ways to help you avert a crisis during your financial institution’s next bout of downtime. 

Know your financial institution

Most companies perform maintenance on a regular schedule. Get familiar with your financial institution’s maintenance schedule and try to conduct business with them outside of those timeframes.

Stay alert

Companies need to sometimes perform maintenance outside of their regular maintenance schedules. They may even give users advance notice. So, it’s important to regularly review notices from your financial institutions. With the number of emails, texts, and push notifications that we receive daily, it can be easy to overlook or outright ignore these messages. Getting in the habit of reviewing messages from your financial institutions can help you avoid being caught off-guard by service outages.

Have a backup plan

Sometimes, there are impromptu outages caused by emergency updates or technical issues. This is when it can be helpful to have alternative payment options readily available. It’s a good idea to have at least two payment sources that you can use to cover your bills.

Give yourself time

It can be tempting to keep your money in a high yield savings account for just one more day before turning the funds over to a creditor. But, you should avoid last-minute payments. Doing so will likely result in stress and anxiety from wondering if your payment will arrive on time.