TSB boss Paul Pester promises compensation over online banking meltdown
TSB has taken down its online banking systems with its boss today issuing a fresh apology to customers and a promise to compensate those affected.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) this evening pledged to investigate TSB’s problems while monitoring the situation to ensure members of the public “are not left out of pocket”.
TSB’s mobile app and online banking was taken offline at around 10.30am.
Chief executive Paul Pester said:
I’ve just resurfaced after 48 hours with my teams who have been working as hard and fast as they can to get our services back up and running. This isn’t the level of service that we pride ourselves on providing, and isn’t what our customers have come to expect from TSB, and for that I’m truly sorry.
“We’re still seeing issues with access to our digital services. One of the steps we need to take to resolve this is to take our mobile app and online banking down for a few hours. We’ve taken this offline at around 10.30 this morning and we hope to be back up later this afternoon. We’ll let your customers know as soon as it’s available again.
“Of course, customers can rest assured that no one will be left out of pocket as a result of these service issues.”
Sam Woods, the Bank of England deputy governor who heads the Prudential Regulation Authority, today described TSB’s woes as “wounds” which were “self-inflicted”.
A spokesperson for the FCA said: “We have been in regular contact with TSB both over the weekend and since the issues they are currently experiencing became apparent. We are working with the firm to ensure customers are properly communicated with and are not left out of pocket.
We will be talking to the firm to understand exactly what went wrong and the steps that they are taking to ensure something like this does not happen again.
Read more: Nicky Morgan demands answers over TSB meltdown
Answers
TSB’s update comes as the chair of an influential parliamentary committee demanded answers on the online outage.
Nicky Morgan has written to TSB’s chief executive Paul Pester demanding to know what went wrong.
Customers had been warned that TSB was planning an upgrade to its systems, with that taking place between 4pm Friday 20 April and 6pm Sunday 22 April.
When TSB split from Lloyds, it had continued to use a banking platform from its former owner while developing its own one. The process of moving across to that was over the weekend, and that disruption was planned, but customers have been reporting troubles long after the 6pm deadline.
But the planned upgrade blocked some people from accounts for more than the two anticipated days, and gave some customers access to others’ accounts – including allowing them to transfer money
Both the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) have made contact with TSB about the problems
A spokesperson for the FCA said the City watchdog is “aware of the issue and liaising with the firm”.
Read more: TSB customers complain they still don’t have access to online accounts