high street lender TSB The bank has been fined £48.7 million by City regulators in 2018 for botched IT upgrades that left many of its 5.2 million customers unable to access banking services.
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) hit the bank with penalties for “widespread” failures on the organization and control over the transfer of its IT systems and customer service data to a new technology platform in April 2018.
The regulators said the post-upgrade issues saw disruption to TSB’s entire branch network as well as its Internet, mobile and telephone banking systems.
This left a “significant proportion” of its 5.2 million customers affected by initial problems with the IT switchover, while some customers suffered ongoing problems and, according to regulators, it may take until December 2018 for TSB to return to business as usual. It took time
Mark Steward, the FCA’s executive director of enforcement and market oversight, said: “The failings in this case were widespread and serious, having a real impact on the daily lives of a significant proportion of TSB’s customers, including those who were vulnerable.
“The firm failed to properly plan for the IT migration, the project’s governance was insufficiently robust and the firm failed to take reasonable care to organize and control its affairs responsibly and effectively with adequate risk management systems” doing.”