TSB Bank emerged from a much-publicised IT crisis two years ago determined to regain customer trust. As Mohamed Dabo reports, Matthew Cottam, TSB’s area director across Greater London and Kent, says the Edinburgh-based bank has learned a lot from its mistakes.
Since the crippling meltdown, TSB “has worked tirelessly to put things right,” Cottam said.
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The spring of 2018 was a difficult time for the bank, he said. That’s when TSB experienced a massive IT failure that cost £330m, while 80,000 customers switched their account to a competitor.
The disaster struck one Sunday in May as the bank was transferring 1.3bn customer records from an IT platform run by its former owner, Lloyds TSB, to one run by its new owner, Sabadell.
The ensuing shutdown resulted in scrutiny from regulators and calls to withhold executive bonuses. Months later, TSB’s chief executive Paul Pester was ousted.
An independent review of the debacle, commissioned by the bank, faulted the TSB board for failing to ask its contractor key questions ahead of the launch.
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By GlobalDataTSB has “learned a lot from its experience,” and is a better bank because of it, Cottam said.
The spring of discontent
TSB customers were greatly influenced by what they were seeing in the press and on social media. “This led to more customers turning to branches for reassurance, even when they were able to access their information [online].”
Media reports were filled with comments from angry customers venting their anger.
“Customers didn’t fully trust what they were seeing [from us] because of the impact of the media,” Cottam said.
As a result, branch transactions increased to tremendous levels. “In many areas, this was the first visit some customers had made to a branch in months, if not years.”
Branch associates faced huge pressure in processing the mountain of transactions. “And yet they still managed to do a fabulous job with our customers,” Cottam said. “It’s a testament to what people can do in times of adversity.”
unfortunately, the circumstances were not the most favourable for an appreciation of the exceptional diligence.
“For our customers, having moved online and then to mobile, to then feel the need to return to branch for day-to-day transactions and for reassurance clearly was a very different experience.”
“Putting things right”
TSB was working round the clock to fix the problems some of its customers were having. “The Putting-Things-Right initiative guided us into 2019.”
Complaint handling. The first thing the bank looked at was the massive number of complaints it had received as a result of the data migration debacle. “We were able to help our branch partners to develop their complaint-handling skills.”
The customer feedback received as a result “was excellent,” he said.
The fraud Refund Guarantee for fraud victims. Launched in April 2019, it was an industry first. A pledge to all customers to get their money back in full, should they ever innocently fall victim to fraud.
“Since the introduction of the programme, we have refunded 100% of the losses of all innocent victims—amounting, overall, to 99% of all fraud cases, with victims ranging from 16 to 97 years of age.”
However, this is far from the norm in the industry, Cottam said. In May last year, eight banking group signed up to a new industry code designed to ensure innocent victims of fraud get their money back.
“The industry average for the first six month of the code on reimbursement was 41%,” he said. “This includes our rate at 99%.”
IBM partnership. TSB has created a new partnership with IBM to build and manage a private cloud environment.
The partnership will see IBM running services across TSB’s core banking platform, with the infrastructure operated and managed by IBM, under the bank’s supervision.
“While hosting and managing select services on a private cloud operated by IBM, we’ll be able to strengthen our IT resilience and leverage higher value technology.”
Adobe partnership. The new partnership with Adobe is designed to accelerate TSB’s digital strategy during the pandemic.
The bank has a variety of other initiatives meant to support customers in the face of the covid-19 crisis.
Reaching out. TSB has repurposed many branch partners to increase their capabilities in assisting customers in their branches or at home.
This has allowed them to contact over 33,000 vulnerable customers from their local branches, Cottam said. “Reaching out to customers for no other purpose than to check that they are okay and to see if there was any way we could do to help.”
Branch opening hours have been kept at 10:00 to 4:00, across the country.
“All in all, it has been an extremely difficult journey,” Cottam said. “But in working together, we’ve managed to do what matters most to our customers. Learning from the mistakes of the past.”
