Migration
Taking a somewhat narrow meaning of the word, the migration did work perfectly in that all of the data was transferred successfully from the old platform to the new. The problem was that the new platform was shite.
IT meltdown bank TSB: It's as good a week as any to announce we're taking back control
IT meltdown bank TSB is taking control of its technology and banking platform amid speculation about the bank's relationship with Spanish owner Sabadell. The business has spent the past year trying to fix technical and publicity problems caused by its botched IT migration, which ultimately cost TSB some £330m and CEO Paul …
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Friday 29th March 2019 12:45 GMT Lee D
Re: Migration
I find it really odd that in such multi-million pound systems, rather than "switch this one off, then switch the new one on", there isn't a duplication of transaction data and then parallel feeding to both systems simultaneously, and a load-balancing in between that sends, say, 1% of their customers to the new platform to see how it works out.
When it all goes wrong, balance back to the old system until the problem is fixed.
The sheer number of layers you could perform such an action at - and double-verify the new systems response against the old by checking their changes against each other - always leaves me amazed that it's basically an on-off and takes months to fix when the new one doesn't work.
I remember when Dabs moved all their in-house equipment to a shiny new system and it basically took the site down for months, and when you look they were retiring antique computers and their new system could barely cope with the load with some ridiculous amount of shiny-new racks in its place.
Pull a feed from your existing system. Duplicate (part of) that feed. Transmogrify it as necessary and feed it to the new system, compare the results.
And if you want to be really mean... you convert the CEOs and other high-ups bank accounts to the "new" system first so they can acid-test everything they need to do to pay their bills with their shiny new enforced system. No better way to stop a bad system change than to make people eat their own dog-food.
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Friday 29th March 2019 13:15 GMT steviebuk
Re: Migration
Because banks want to make as much money as they can get. From what I've read over the years, banks IT systems are always poor. So I bet they could of done what you suggest but "Want to save some money so we won't".
Not in the same vain but was in Nationwide recently, and they couldn't even be bothered to buy them new privacy filters. So the cashier was having to hold the privacy filter in place because it kept falling off. What was it held on by? Bluetac. The Bluetac was so old even that was failing.
jesus!
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Friday 29th March 2019 15:46 GMT Teiwaz
Re: Migration
I find it really odd that in such multi-million pound systems, rather than "switch this one off, then switch the new one on", there isn't a duplication of transaction data and then parallel feeding to both systems simultaneously, and a load-balancing in between that sends, say, 1% of their customers to the new platform to see how it works out.
That approach might work for some systems, but sounds like a huge operations overhead for a Bank. That 1% of data has to be processed same as the other 99%, and often updates and reporting have to delivered in a tight timeframe. Running two systems in parallel Live sounds like a potential for as much disaster.
Shadowing the current system by the new for a time, then switching over to the new as the Live system, and running the old as a fallback might be wiser, expensive, but wiser.
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Friday 29th March 2019 20:38 GMT Gene Cash
Re: Migration
> a duplication of transaction data and then parallel feeding to both systems simultaneously
We did that with payroll about 30 years ago, moving from a System/34 to see where the new system had issues.
The new system was on an S-100 CompuPro MP/M dual-processor 8-16 box, to tell you how long ago. I can't remember what accounting package, but it was one of the new commercial off-the-shelf ones instead of the usual custom-written.
Turned out the new system was golden, and the old system... well, massively fucked and almost completely wrong would be the understatement of the decade.
Holy. Cow. I don't think the old system had done a single paycheck correctly in 10 years.
The accounting department was in seriously hot water with pissed-off-for-good-reason employees. Lawsuits were avoided, however. Barely.
I still remember the chief accountant's face as he started going "ok, they don't match, let's see what the new one's broken, shall we?" and got progressively darker and redder as each transaction on the old system proved to be way off.
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Friday 29th March 2019 12:08 GMT AJ MacLeod
Closing High Street branches
Absolutely brilliant move - eliminate the one reason that any sane person may have for becoming a customer! I have a better idea for saving cash and improving efficiency... fire everyone within the top 15% of salary level and let the people who actually make things work get on with it in peace.
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Friday 29th March 2019 12:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Closing High Street branches
For any sane person with Internet access, the one reason for being a customer is their current account with 5% interest. Much as I agree that their relatively good branch coverage is (or at least was) a major selling point, I have to admit that the last time I went into my branch was to change some old banknotes I found in a wallet in my attic.
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Friday 29th March 2019 13:11 GMT Giovani Tapini
Re: Closing High Street branches
Branches are really more for advice than transactions now. There are a vast number of people that have very little concept about how one sort of account or service is different to another. Albeit you get advice biased on the services the given provider actually delivers (in this case TSB). Financial education is rather lacking around how different products work and what risk people (don't realise) they take with some.
Interesting that the two elements of the same organisation are both taking what appears to be competitive positions you are too slow and expensive vs you are too useless and we want control back from all your 3rd & 4th party supply chains. I'm going to get my comfy chair and popcorn out for this one.
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Friday 29th March 2019 13:19 GMT steviebuk
Re: Closing High Street branches
Branches are also useful because you know that, unless someone on the inside has set them up, their cash machines are 99% clean and not compromised. Not compromised by hidden pin hole cameras with card skimmers attached. And you know this because they are unavailable when the bank is closed and during the day, no sensible crook would try to rig them with all the staff watching.
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Friday 29th March 2019 15:37 GMT adam payne
"In the coming months, we will take direct ownership of our banking platform, including direct contractual relationships with the third party technology suppliers."
Why wouldn't you have direct relationships with your suppliers?, it makes sense. Why go log a call with one company for them to do the same with another company, it just adds another level of bureaucracy that you have to deal with.
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Friday 29th March 2019 16:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Outsourcing a great way to have somebody else to blame when it all goes very very wrong.
"Why go log a call with one company for them to do the same with another company, it just adds another level of bureaucracy that you have to deal with."
I've heard it claimed it's about reducing the overhead of managing multiple suppliers. You just need to deal with one company and they deal with the others for you.... or not as it turns out a lot of the time ; ) Often the contracts aren't even written to cascade all the requirements properly. Much of my career has been spent as one of those people that actually does something and has to explain the thing you thought you paid for hasn't been paid for and you'd better talk to somebody about that so I can get on and do the needful.
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Friday 29th March 2019 16:44 GMT druck
Useless systems
My mortgage is with TSB and I'm coming to the end of the two year deal, so I needed to log on and get a statement. Couldn't remember if I'd logged on before, so put in my name and the account number from a letter, it rejected it as being two digits too long. Left off the /1234 bit and it was two digits too short. Thought maybe I hadn't registered, so tried that and the account number was rejected as being 3 digits too long, or 1 digit too short. Phoned them up, and the girl said "oh the computer system has never worked", I can give you your current balance now, and send a statement through the post in 10 to 15 working days. WTF!
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Monday 1st April 2019 09:46 GMT WallMeerkat
Re: Useless systems
I remember when I moved house, Santander neglected to inform Visa.
Therefore Verified By Visa would only work when I entered my previous postcode.
I contacted Santander who told me it was the Visa system and to contact them, I found a contact number and they said they got their information from the bank (Santander) and to contact them...
Otherwise, honourable mentions to go First Trust bank who deliberately transposed a Direct Debit reference number when I asked for my account to be closed and the details migrated to Santander.
Or to the "computer says no" attitude of Ulster Bank (RBS)
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Thursday 9th May 2019 21:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Useless systems
You should try again. I believe they've sorted this out.
It's an internal/external account number issue. The translation wasn't working. Mortgages (unlike most of their products) aren't hosted on the core Proteo system. So need account number translation when interacting with common core platforms (like digital).
However, I believe that under the Lloyds architecture, if you have a mortgage and no other Lloyds product you can't see your mortgage on line at all. This is changing at TSB - so long as you can register!
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Saturday 30th March 2019 23:11 GMT Steve Medway
I was loving being a tsb customer with all that lovely compensation they were giving for their constant ****ups.
But in the end after phoning them to warn of a dodgy attempted transactions they still let my a/c get rinsed of 2k and then took 32 days to send me a new debit card... (after multiple phone calls and false promises) their time was up.
Sure the 450 quid+ compo I got was useful but I'd have forgone all of it to have an account which reported its figures correctly and provided a card so I could actually spend money from my current a/c .
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
