The UK bank Lloyds TSB has strongly denied a newspaper report which suggested that records for 1.6 million customers were accidentally wiped during a project to integrate computer systems.

According to a report in the Sunday Business newspaper, account holders discovered details of recent transactions were missing when they tried to log on to their accounts via the internet.

But Lloyds TSB told BBC News Online that the report was "completely untrue".

The bank said that, as a rule, customers could access through the web only the banking details for the past 10 days.

Older transaction records were not available, as by then customers would have received a printout of their statement in the post.

"There's been no IT or technology failure," a spokeswoman said.

Sunday Business had quoted a bank spokesman as saying that a �250m project to combine TSB and Lloyds computer systems had led to the erasing of the data.

According to the report, a separate project to provide real-time account information was also blamed.

Not lost

"The information is still there in the bank's own systems but customers just can't see it when they log on to their accounts over the internet," the spokesman had told the Sunday Business.

He allegedly described it as a "technical hitch".

Earlier this year, technical problems at the bank put its online service out of order for almost a week for some customers.

Lloyds has managed to attract a lot of online customers.

According to the internet research company Jupiter MMXI, Lloyds TSB is now the most successful bank in driving large number of customers to its site.