TSB CEO Paul Pester tweeted that he hopes the consumer-facing mobile app and banking services will be back up again later this afternoon.
Brokers say intermediary service went ‘down the pan’ about a week ago and many fear the promised return of online product retention through brokers due back up in May could also be derailed.
On the 3 April, TSB confirmed brokers could no longer complete product transfers via its systems for two months, so customers would have to go direct to the lender until the end of May.
Another national broker said TSB had identified a number of potential issues last week involving the migration of mortgage cases not yet at offer which were set up on the old system – but were putting in place ‘work arounds’ to try to mitigate disruption.
TSB was unavailable to comment at time of writing.
Conor Murphy, CEO at Capricorn Financial said all lenders get service issues from time to time and the net issue is that service to the consumer suffers.
“Consumers are bearing more of the brunt than we are right now,” he added.
Treasury Select Committee rage
As a result, Treasury Select Committee chair Rt. Hon Nicky Morgan MP has demanded answers this morning over consumers barred from current account and banking services as the planned three-day IT outage overran.
Earlier this month, TSB informed customers that during a planned upgrade to its systems between 4pm on Friday 20 April and 6pm on Sunday 22 April, services such as online banking may not be available, but there have been widespread problems reported after the scheduled downtime.
There have also been reports that TSB customers could access the accounts of other TSB customers, including their account numbers, sort codes and transaction histories, and possibly having the ability to perform actions on these accounts, including transferring money.
Morgan has written a letter to the TSB CEO to find out what has gone wrong, the extent of the failure and potential compensation for customers and demands a response by Friday 27 April.
Morgan said: “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.
“Warm words and platitudes will not suffice. TSB customers deserve to know what has happened, when normal services will resume, and how they can expect to be compensated.”
Morgan said she will also involve the regulator in due course.
Twitter apology
CEO Pester posted a series of tweets three hours ago to apologise and reassure consumers:
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.
— Paul Pester (@PaulPester) April 24, 2018
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 deeply sorry.
— Paul Pester (@PaulPester) April 24, 2018
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.
— Paul Pester (@PaulPester) April 24, 2018
We'll be taking this offline and we hope to be back up later this afternoon. We'll let you know as soon as it's available again.
— Paul Pester (@PaulPester) April 24, 2018
Of course, customers can rest assured that no one will be left out of pocket as a result of these service issues.
— Paul Pester (@PaulPester) April 24, 2018
TSB broker service
The bank is switching 1.3bn customer records across to its new platform, in what it says is one of the biggest ever bank migrations in Europe.
In an online broker platform survey by Dock9 last year, Tesco, Vida and TSB topped the table in terms of user experience.
TSB launched to the intermediary market in January 2015, after rejoining the high street in September 2013. In the first six months of operation in the broker market it advanced £665m of gross lending while receiving mortgage applications of £1.9bn.
