back to article Watchdog slams TSB boss for underplaying extent of IT meltdown

A City watchdog has launched a stinging attack on TSB chief Paul Pester for portraying "an optimistic view" of its catastrophic IT meltdown in April that prevented 1.9 million customers from using online bank services. Andrew Bailey, head of the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), told Parliament's Treasury Select …

  1. Gordon Pryra

    Someone Pissed Andrew Bailey off big time

    For the FCA to actually do something meaningful.

    Then again, they are only "investigating" . Because after only two months of this being in the National Press, they wont have bothered to look into it yet....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Someone Pissed Andrew Bailey off big time

      It's prudent of them to have waited this long. The worst thing they could have done would have have been to stick their nose in while everything was breaking, pulling the techies trying to fix things into even more status update meetings.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Someone Pissed Andrew Bailey off big time

        It's prudent of them to have waited this long. The worst thing they could have done would have have been ....pulling the techies .... into even more status update meetings.

        The people pulled into meetings would be Pester The Twat and his team of top talent bunglers. If they then choose to take their technical staff offline to do reports, that's great - hastens the eventual resolution.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Underfunded IT: Inescapable Clawback on Executive Pay

    The buck stops at the top... But it doesn't look like that will ever happen.

    Not here, in this reality anyway!

    So time to switch to a shard in another multiverse, anyone got a how-to?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Underfunded IT: Inescapable Clawback on Executive Pay

      So time to switch to a shard in another multiverse, anyone got a how-to?

      Purse String Theory may help.

  3. Jemma

    You ain't seen nothing yet...

    Wait until the HSBC (Highly Suspect Banking Cartel) switch over to their new UK app..

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: You ain't seen nothing yet...

      They already have.

      I'm using it.

      The transition was seamless, the old one still works, and I've seen no problems (apart from the fact they juggled things around).

      Pretty necessary given that they won't be able to use a pan-European app after Brexit, presumably.

      1. scrubber

        Re: You ain't seen nothing yet...

        Did they start with the Mexican drug cartels or the rogue nations? It's so hard to keep up with HSBC these days.

  4. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Let's see if it's still broken, 7 weeks later

    Yep.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I hope they give them a good stern telling off.

  6. steviebuk Silver badge

    Same old.

    I hate that saying, but then I hate most sayings for some reason. But it fits well. I bet it's the same old issue of under funded IT.

    When will they learn? Never, while they can still get away with it.

    1. Giovani Tapini

      Re: Same old.

      Underfunded? possibly,

      however in this case it seems also likely that they were also not respected for any expertise or experience.

      They were put under a lot of pressure to deliver and I suspect with a great deal of "I'll accept that risk because we have to deliver on time" type episodes. You can easily get to a critical mass of these, where they interrelate and a single issue can pull loads of other things down with it.

      The fact IBM were called in for being "middleware" experts also suggests a diversion from a likely application design challenge where it simply does not function well with bits missing (stress testing anyone)

      Overall my strong suspicion is that this is a catalogue of relatively simple, avoidable issues, cascading into a rather large disaster because too many corners were cut.

      Add into the mix the usual fraudsters jumping in on the act (albeit some seemed to have access to possibly internal information) leaving a final social engineering trick to drain accounts.

      With banking now in real time and often highly connected, there is no effective "off switch" for your accounts and a 3 hour call queue to do so is like bailing out the titanic with a teaspoon. They are getting close to being as vulnerable as your bit coin wallet left lying around online...

      It will be interesting if the MP's get to anything that seems like a plausible truth though....

      1. teebie
        Joke

        Re: Same old.

        "albeit some seemed to have access to possibly internal information"

        In fairness to TSB, some people logged in and were shown other people's accounts, so there's no need to assume that any leaks of information came from an insider.

        Disclaimer: I am not TSB's defence lawyer, and it seems unlikely I ever will be.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Same old.

        Overall my strong suspicion is that this is a catalogue of relatively simple, avoidable issues, cascading into a rather large disaster because too many corners were cut.

        Yeah, that sounds like my little shoppe right there. I have a bad feeling about this "bet the company" project that's coming up and ain't seen nothing but optimism signaling and discussion about the color scheme of the AI-powered customer-facing website. Not even a Gantt chart yet. While we are sitting in a crater of enormous technical debt.

        And .. underfunded? I suspect plunderfunded!

      3. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

        Re: Same old.

        Quote:

        It will be interesting if the MP's get to anything that seems like a plausible truth though....

        Only if MPs were affected by it..............

        If only the proles were... who cares.... make the chair of the committee a director and give him/her a fat pay check and its no action beyond a token slap on the wrist followed by trebles all round..

  7. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    Too Shy to Bank properly....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Too Sly to Bank properly might work in this situation :)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Was there a silent "te" on the end of that?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I said it before...

    ...I'll say it again - I really hope they have their banking licence revoked. It's the perfect time for the regulator to actually make a difference.

    The media friendly bullshit spouted by the bank during the "main event" should be torn to pieces, nonsense references to "upgrades" not "migrations" etc. which downplay what the bank had committed itself to (and therefore, little things like not being half-pregnant having started to migrate and having no realistic way back after any transactions had been processed on the net system) but also the reports of errors in applications that could only be caused by techies being given carte blanche to "whatever was necessary" to get things sorted (read: if it compiles, ship it!).

    Nothing will change, as has already been commented "You ain't seen nothing yet..."

  9. J. R. Hartley

    Did they offshore their IT?

    Slap a big fine right up 'em!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Did they offshore their IT?

      Yeah, ban them, fine them, whatever. The only people that really hurts is their long-suffering customers.

      1. J. R. Hartley

        Re: Did they offshore their IT?

        Bollocks. If they try and increase their charges, people will leave. Don't accept their bullshit.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Way too mild

    "A City watchdog has launched a stinging attack on TSB chief Paul Pester for portraying "an optimistic view" of its catastrophic IT meltdown"

    Stinging attack? Hardly - that sounds more like a Sir Humphrey-ism.

    A stinging attack would be the Malcolm Tucker version.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    From what I hear the migration was entirely (mis) handled and designed by Sabadell in Spain.

    One suspects that the UK CEO of TSB was told what was going to happen in the migration by his bosses in Spain and once it had happened he was told by Spain that the system was working OK - so he said so in the media: when clearly it was not.

    This is why Sabedell have not sacked him as he is a convenient and probably mostly innocent punch bag to deflect blame from where is most likely does lie - in Spain.

    Somehow I can't see the directors of Sabadell giving evidence to a UK parliamentary committee.

    ...and quite what the FCA is going to do about all this will be interesting as it seems the first case of UK customers being seriously messed about where the ownership and control is outside the regulatory oversight of the UK authorities (the Icelandic banks collapse excepted).

    I wondered about the bit when IBM was called in to fix it and whether at that time the FCA/Bank of England was on the point of taking the bank over.

    Indeed are they going to fine TSB or the parent company Sabadell?

    Whose idea was it anyway to enforce a split off off from Lloyds Banking group of the TSB brand as an independent entity along with many of its customers forcibly switched over and would lead to it being purchased by a foreign bank - ah yes that would be the EU.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No doubt they'll need a bailout soon. We can print some money, add the debt to the tax payer and then close down some more essential services and kill some vulnerable people. The Daily Mail will love it and the Tories will get voted back in.

  13. Mayday
    Coat

    Why is that whenever I hear "FCA"

    I think of the Ferengi Commerce Authority?

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