'Intermittent' online glitch affecting Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland

Lloyds Banking Group says it is still working to identify a glitch that has left internet banking customers struggling to access their accounts online for a second day.

The problems - quite common within the industry - first arose at 10am on Wednesday, with account holders taking to social media to vent their frustrations ever since.

Lloyds said the problem appeared to be "intermittent" and was being seen across its network of banks including Halifax and Bank of Scotland, with both apps and online access suffering from the fault.

It is understood that some people unable to access their money have later been able to log in. No possible cause, including hacking, has been ruled out at this stage.

However, the bank said the vast majority of its customers did not seem to be impacted.

"We have been having intermittent service issues with internet banking.

"We are working hard to restore a full service for our customers and apologise for any inconvenience caused," a spokeswoman said.

Lloyds, as a group, has six million digital customers and they are not the first to suffer from such banking issues.

A series of industry failures - both online and in cash machine operations - has prompted a backlash from consumer groups, regulators and MPs (BSE: MPSLTD.BO - news) who have urged the sector to increase spending on their systems' resilience.

RBS (LSE: RBS.L - news) is among banks to have been fined for poor performance.

It was handed a £56m penalty over a computer outage in 2012.

Tesco Bank is the lender to have attracted regulatory interest most recently.

Sky News revealed on Wednesday how it had called in auditors to investigate the hacking attack last autumn in which customers had £2.5m fraudulently taken.

The Financial Times reported last month that the Financial Conduct Authority was exploring whether Tesco Bank had exposed its customers to fraud by issuing debit cards with sequential numbers.