TSB has been fined a total of £48.65m for “operational risk management and governance failures” related to its IT meltdown in 2018 that left customers unable to access their accounts for several weeks.
The bank updated its IT systems in April 2018, migrating the data for its corporate and customer services on to a new IT platform. However, although the data itself was transferred successfully, the platform immediately experienced technical failures. This resulted in significant disruption to the continuity of TSB’s banking services, including branch, telephone, online and mobile banking, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said.
All of TSB’s branches and a “significant proportion” of its 5.2 million customers were affected by the initial issues. Some customers continued to be affected by certain issues and it took until December 2018 for TSB to fully return to business-as-usual.
TSB has paid £32.7m in compensation to customers who were affected by the problems.
“The failings in this case were widespread and serious which had a real impact on the day-to-day lives of a significant proportion of TSB’s customers, including those who were vulnerable,” said Mark Steward, FCA Executive Director of Enforcement and Market Oversight.
“The firm failed to plan for the IT migration properly, the governance of the project was insufficiently robust and the firm failed to take reasonable care to organise and control its affairs responsibly and effectively, with adequate risk management systems.”
