2018 TSB crash investigation confirms app failure as main cause

Last year, an IT crash that was reported which locked out two million TSB customers and halved Sabadell’s (BME: SAB) profit for last year.

Investigations into the issue have been ongoing since it was reported, and reports today suggest that the main cause was a move to a new banking platform before it had undergone rigorous testing.

The report by law firm Slaughter & May found TSB’s board failed “to fully understand the scope and complexity” of the new system prior to its failure, which forced out the then CEO Paul Pester after heavy criticism from customers and politicians.

Sabadell continued to support TSB all the way through the investigation despite heavy public scrutiny and fallen faith by shareholders.

TSB was bought by Sabadell in 2015, had to compensate for weeks of TSB customers being unable to access their money and rising fraud attacks.

The IT crash has cast a long shadow over the bank, as it tries to move on under new chief executive Debbie Crosbie, who is set to outline her strategy for the bank next week, as Reuters reported.

In a statement on Tuesday Pester criticised Slaughter & May’s “scattergun approach” to its investigation and attempted to shift blame to Sabadell’s IT arm Sabis for the failures.

“If these findings are right, Sabis rolled the dice by running tests on only one of TSB’s two new data centres and this decision was kept from me and the rest of the TSB board,” he said.

The global state of the finance industry has not painted a pretty picture, and there seems to be a slump with many of the major banks.

Big names such as Lloyd’s (LON: LLOY) and HSBC (LON: HSBA) have seen their quarterly profits crash amidst cut throat market conditions, whilst Deutsche Bank (ETR: DBK) have confirmed their crisis state as they reported a loss in their third quarter.

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