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Warning Signs for TSB's IT Meltdown were Clear a Year Ago

posted by mrpg on Monday April 30 2018, @01:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the clusterfuck++ dept.

An Anonymous Coward sends us a link:

The Guardian reports

[...] With customers locked out of their bank accounts, mortgage accounts vanishing, small businesses reporting that they could not pay their staff and reports of debit cards ceasing to work, the TSB[*] computer crisis has been one of the worst in recent memory. The bank, its chief executive, Paul Pester, admitted on Thursday, was “on its knees” and it faces a compensation bill likely to run to tens of millions of pounds.

[...] By March 2017, the nightmare for customers that was going to unfold a year later appeared inevitable. “It was unbelievable – hardly even a prototype or proof of concept, yet it was supposed to be fully tested and working by May before the integration work started,” the insider continued. “Senior staff were furious about the state it was in. Even logging in was problematic.”

[...] However, only hours after the switch was flicked, systems crumpled and up to 1.9m TSB customers who use internet and mobile banking were locked out. “I could have put money on the rollout being the disaster it has been, with evidence of major code changes on the hoof over last weekend and into this week,” the insider said.

[...] Customers reported receiving texts saying their cards had been used abroad, that they had discovered thousands of pounds in their accounts they did not have – or that mortgage accounts had vanished, multiplied or changed currency. One bemused account holder showed his TSB banking app recording a direct debit paid to Sky Digital 81 years from now. Some saw details of other people’s accounts and holidaymakers complained that they had been left unable to pay restaurant and hotel bills.

TSB, to customers’ fury, at first insisted the problems were only intermittent. At 3.40am on Wednesday 25 April, Pester tweeted that the system was “up and running”, only to be forced to apologise the next day and admit it was actually only running at 50% capacity.

[*] [Update added for our non-UK community. --martyb] TSB Bank was originally founded as "Trustee Savings Bank plc" on November 27, 1985:

TSB Bank plc is a retail and commercial bank in the United Kingdom, which is a subsidiary of the Sabadell Group. TSB Bank operates a nationwide network of 550 branches across England, Scotland and Wales. TSB launched in its present form on 9 September 2013, with more than 4.6 million customers and over £20 billion of loans and customer deposits, and is headquartered in Edinburgh.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Monday April 30 2018, @01:59PM (7 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 30 2018, @01:59PM (#673726) Journal

    [...] By March 2017, the nightmare for customers that was going to unfold a year later appeared inevitable. “It was unbelievable – hardly even a prototype or proof of concept, yet it was supposed to be fully tested and working by May before the integration work started,” the insider continued. “Senior staff were furious about the state it was in. Even logging in was problematic.”

    So no plan or preparation going in, and even the "senior staff" realized the scheme was a failure. Yet they still moved forward on it. What did they think was going to happen? That it would magically fix itself upon contact with the customer? That works, right?

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Monday April 30 2018, @02:06PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 30 2018, @02:06PM (#673729) Journal
    This also illustrates the perils of assuming a project with very different characteristics will behave just like a chain of successful projects. Here, the Spanish owners tried a migration approach that had worked with small banks that they had taken over, but failed hard when applied to a huge bank with complex systems.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by zocalo on Monday April 30 2018, @02:08PM (1 child)

    by zocalo (302) on Monday April 30 2018, @02:08PM (#673732)
    If there's proof that the "senior staff" knew about this, then I suspect criminal negligence proceedings are probably just a matter of time, how far off depending on whether the Crown Prosecution Service gets to run with it immediately, or the Financial Conduct Authority gets to take a crack at first, then refers it to the CPS. Neither are any guarantee of anything more than a slap on the wrist for those found culpable of course. More interesting are the claims about people being able to access other's data; PII doesn't get much more personal than that (other than perhaps medical records), so there's also a possibility of some sanctions under data protection acts as well. Whatever happens, I'm sure we can expect the usual "pretending to care" enquiry that squanders a few more millions from the UK's politicians.

    Too big to fail though, right?
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

    • (Score: 2) by bootsy on Tuesday May 01 2018, @08:53AM

      by bootsy (3440) on Tuesday May 01 2018, @08:53AM (#674081)

      I can count on one hand the amount of people the UK regulators have successfully prosecuted in the finance sector. The bank will definitely get a big juicy fine but prosecuting senior executives will be unlikely. These trials take years and always seem to collapse.

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @02:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @02:09PM (#673734)

    Maybe they thought the Market would take care of it?

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @03:35PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @03:35PM (#673774)

    So no plan or preparation going in, and even the "senior staff" realized the scheme was a failure. Yet they still moved forward on it. What did they think was going to happen? That it would magically fix itself upon contact with the customer? That works, right?

    Parent Company: Spanish
    Affected Customers: British
    Spanish customers affected: None
    Result: Large case of no fucks given by parent company.

    Brexit, the gift that keeps giving..

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 01 2018, @01:38AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 01 2018, @01:38AM (#673992) Journal
      Because Banco Sabadell cares more about some EU regulations that it has yet to run afoul of in several other takeovers than the money it put in TSB? Their MO stretches back several takeovers and they started the conversion of TSB a year before Brexit. They were going to do this anyway. And by moving so fast, they're actually under EU regulations now rather than post-EU regulations later.

    • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday May 01 2018, @10:23AM

      by Nuke (3162) on Tuesday May 01 2018, @10:23AM (#674093)

      I thought it might be viewed as a good example of why the UK is better out of the EU - to discourage foreign ownership. I don't suppose a group of Spanish bankers would love the British public any more from within the EU than from outside it. Anyway, I don't believe nationalities have anything to do with this foul-up.

      Oh shit, it's started to rain outside ... that's Brexit for you again, the gift that keeps giving..