MANILA - Officials of the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) on Wednesday assured its clients that no banking data was leaked when an internal glitch hit its system and caused unauthorized transactions on June 6.

Appearing at a Senate inquiry Wednesday, a BPI executive said there was no breach in the bank's data as they were stored in a "closed system" not connected to anything external.

BPI, the country's third largest bank, had earlier dispelled fears of hacking, saying the error did not compromise client accounts.

"Hindi ito naka-connect sa internet," Ramon Locsin Jocson, Head of BPI's Enterprise Services Group, told the Senate Committee on Banks, Financial Institutions and Currencies.

HOW IT HAPPENED

The glitch happened after one of the bank's top technicians entered a wrong date while trying to update a report from the internal system.

"On June 6, we needed to reconcile a report from May 26 to 29. Ang na-enter niya sa online system namin was April 27 to May 2," Jocson said.

"In effect, the balances were updated using transactions from April 27 to May 2 instead of June 6. These were all your transactions in the past, nabalik lang," he added.

The bank said the glitch only affected transactions via automated teller machines, cash acceptance machines, and point of sale systems.

"Never did transactions of one client cross to another client," he added.

The error disabled electronic transactions for two days.