British bank TSB, on the heels of an IT disaster that saw its annual profits wiped out, recently dealt with an issue where customer payments didn’t come out on time, according to a report by the Financial Times.
Some customers weren’t able to get their salary payments, and after the issue came to light, TSB told its customers to ask for emergency cash from its branches.
The bank said it fixed the issue by morning on Friday (Nov. 22), but the timing was difficult, as the bank was already dealing with the fallout from a previous digital misfire. The bank said it was sorry for the “inconvenience” it caused customers, and promised that no one would be left without funding.
The previous IT issue involved the bank’s mishandling of customer data when it moved to a new system, in April of 2018.
British law firm Slaughter and May published a £25 million report that said the bank could have avoided the issue but missed several chances to do so. TSB pushed back against the report, saying that it didn’t “paint a full picture” of what happened, and it blamed the problem on a tech issue at a data center and poor testing from a sister company also owned by Sabadell.
TSB said the issue was now resolved and that its tech issues were under the industry average.
The bank plans to introduce a rejuvenation strategy to unfold over the course of three years, and it wants to put its past problems behind it. The plan is expected to include the closing of branches and job cuts, and the institution's new management team, which includes CEO Debbie Crosbie, has repeatedly warned that the bank’s cost base is at an untenable level.
The bank operates in 550 branches across the U.K., Scotland and Wales. It was founded in September of 2013.
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