TSB IT disaster moves into a second week

TSB customers are still experiencing difficulties accessing internet and mobile banking services, just over a week after problems began.

On Friday 20 April, TSB began transferring millions of customer accounts to its new core banking platform, but customers were soon hit with major problems. These included the inability to access accounts, money appearing and disappearing, and customers being able to see the accounts of others.

The bank has been working to fix this for over a week, and on Thursday 26 April it said it had hired IBM to help fix the problems.

TSB CEO Paul Pester told BBC Radio 4: “I will take direct control from eight o’clock (0700 GMT) this morning for our platform, and I’ve drafted in a team of global experts from IBM.”

In its latest update, the bank said internet banking and business banking services were available again, but admitted “some customers may still have difficulties accessing and using these services. We are working hard to address these issues”.

It added that its mobile app is also now available.

These problems are the result of the bank investing heavily in moving customer accounts off the systems of Lloyds bank and to its own core platform. This will not only save it £160m a year, but enable it to build its own digital services to help it in an industry where customers increasingly want digital banking services.

The issues will cost the bank heavily in customer compensation, could lead to customers switching banks for current accounts and will do little for its image as a challenger bank.

TSB had been talking up the advantage it will gain over other large banks in the digital banking era through its new platform, and already begun developing services for it.

In April 2017, it launched the first fruits of its new core banking system with a mobile app for Android and iOS devices, developed using the Proteo4UK system. It is also introducing facial recognition to its mobile banking app, offering iPhone X users the opportunity to use their faces as identification.