CAF Bank expects that next year’s operating profits will cover costs relating to the 10-day service outage suffered by charity customers over the summer.
The Charities Aid Foundation’s accounts for the year to the end of April show the charity, of which CAF Bank is a subsidiary, distributed a record £1.4bn to charities last year, up from the previous high of £1.2bn recorded in 2024/25.
Income also rose to more than £1.6bn, up from just under £1.4bn in the previous 12 months.
The accounts note that CAF Bank “experienced unauthorised activity on its online banking service after 30 April 2026.”
This resulted in the bank taking its system offline on 24 July because it said it had identified suspicious activity on a small number of accounts.
All customers affected by the attempted fraudulent activity were contacted, the bank’s chief executive, Alison Taylor, said in an email at the time.
But an investigation found a “previously unknown vulnerability” in how some third-party software connects to its online portal, meaning the system had to be taken offline to make changes.
The outage, which ended up lasting 10 days, prevented many charities from paying their staff, suppliers and bills on time and many complained of extreme hold times when trying to make time-sensitive payments over the phone.
The accounts say the issue has been addressed and “CAF Bank’s operating profits for 2026/27 are forecast to cover the operational costs directly attributable to the incident, including customer redress”.
CAF Bank made a profit after tax of £4.3m in 2025/26, the accounts show, down from £11.1m in the previous 12 months.
This was partly down to administrative expenses increasing by more than £7m year on year to slightly more than £40m in 2025/26, the accounts show.
Asked how much the costs from the outage could run to, a CAF spokesperson said that was a matter for next year’s accounts, but the figure is not expected to run into millions of pounds.