Each Reserve Bank should ensure during all IS examinations of financial institutions and independent service providers that the necessary steps are being conducted to evaluate the status of Year 2000 action plans. Virtually every organization will have its computing operations affected in some way by the rollover of the two digit year value to 00. Many computer systems will recognize this date as the year 1900. The potential impact is that date sensitive calculations would be based on erroneous data or could cause a system failure. It can also affect record keeping, such as inventory, maintenance, and file retention.
Reliable information is necessary for financial institutions to conduct business.
These coding changes impact billions of lines of program code, throughout government, banking, and all other users of computer technology. Most vulnerable are the community financial institutions that do their own programming with in-house developed software systems. Banking, however, is a heavily technology sensitive industry and will be impacted greatly. This lack of planning could result in the extended or permanent disruption of computer system operations. This may be the result of either the problem itself or the cost of fixing it.