Parliamentary committee demands answers over TSB outage
An influential parliamentary committee has demanded more than just a simple explanation from TSB over the IT meltdown that caused a breach of highly sensitive data at the start of the week.
TSB, which is owned by Spanish bank Sabadell, upgraded its online system from Friday 20 April to Sunday 22 April but customers found on Monday that they were still unable to access certain online banking services and that they could see other accounts' banking details and not their own.
Although TSB apologised for the breach, Nicky Morgan, chair of the Treasury select committee, has written to the bank's chief executive, Paul Pester.
She said: “The reports of unauthorised transactions, access to other customers’ accounts, and failures of in-branch services have all the hallmarks of an IT meltdown.
“This is yet another addition to the litany of failures of banking IT systems. Potentially millions of customers could be affected by uncertainty and disruption.
“It simply isn’t good enough to expose customers to IT failures, including delays in paying bills and an inability to access their own money.”
She also said that “warm words and platitudes” would not be enough and customers expected to be compensated.
TSB will not only face the parliamentary committee, it will also have to deal with the customers that decide to close down their accounts after losing trust in the company over the IT breach.