Financial authorities fine UK bank nearly $60m for platform migration disaster

Regulators in the UK have fined TSB Bank a total of £48.6 million ($60 million) for a botched platform migration which in 2018 cost the financial services firm £200 million. Failures in operational risk management and governance – including management of outsourcing risks – relating to the bank's IT upgrade program led to …

[Anonymous Coward]

The report written by Slaughter and May makes fascinating reading if you've got the time for it. I'm pretty sure most people who've been involved in a project of any size will recognise some (a lot?) of the points of failure identified in it.

[crg the new one]

What points of failure, let me guess: static variables used as "per-user" caches, test plans that never tested with more than one server and one user, no concern of what happens if the next request of the same browser goes to a different web server, everything coded like the whole system is gonna be used by a single user?

(at that time I was hired to fix exactly the same kind of errors, people seeing other people's data, but for a water supplier. You won't believe what kind of s#it a large supplier delivers for £5.5m)

[myhandler]

FFS - just show our local currency in the headline - sod the dollars

Too much septicisation going on.

[mobailey]

> Too much septicisation going on.

We should be spelling it "septicization" now.

-mobailey

[Anonymous Coward]

On "The Regiztre"

[luis river]

subject for investigation

We predicted this back in 2017, when Lloyds ignored the concerns of many IT insiders who said that the cloud transformation deal with IBM, worth some £1.3 billion, was itself not “fit for purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: subject for investigation

You know it'd make a fascinating study if somebody spent time analysing comments made on El Reg at the time these sort of projects are announced and seeing how good predictors the readership are: I can think of quite a few things that the majority said wouldn't work that in fact didn't and almost none that did. That may be down to Baader-Meinhof and/or poor memory, or it may simply be that if you say of any large scale project that it will fail then the odds are in your favour of being right. It would be good to see if the collective wisdom of Reg readers is spot on though.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: subject for investigation

I have lamented in the past that the comments on the Register's articles are unlikely to be mandated reading for MBA students (and certainly not for those 'studying' Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the UK's 'top' universities) who want to rule the world. I can only remember one of the many things a colleague used to say: "if only they'd spoken to the people doing the job this would never have happened".

The UK economists are worried about so many people having left the workforce in the last few years and want us 'economically inactive"* people back working. Well, a first step would be demonstrably competent management who are more interested in doing their jobs than climbing the management ladder a the expense of everyone else.

*Question: If, as a retired person I am "economically inactive", why do I still have to pay for things?

[yetanotheraoc]

Re: subject for investigation

Because you don't want to become biologically inactive.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: subject for investigation

Well, not for a while. ;o)

[Vincent Ballard]

Re: subject for investigation

Baader-Meinhof? What do German terrorists have to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: subject for investigation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: subject for investigation

No, no, no, the Baader-Meinhof gang is just a red herring faction here.

I shouldn't really reveal this, but it's actually all due to the mystical powers of the number 23. You'll see soon enough…

[Insert sadsack pun here]

Re: subject for investigation

"Baader-Meinhof? What do German terrorists have to do with it?"

Wow, that's weird - that must be rhe fourth or fifth time someone's mentioned Baader-Meinhof on this thread.

[Gene Cash]

Re: subject for investigation

I think "the collective wisdom of Reg readers" is mostly the sad result of experience. Most of us are the "been there got the t-shirt" crew

[Boris the Cockroach]

Re: subject for investigation

And that wisdom was usually gained by crying 'no no no' at meetings where all the mangler responsible wanted to hear was 'yes'

And then getting shouted at for sabotage when the project fell over and burned because it was an ill concieved idea in the first place.

With the result the mangler either went up the ladder for 'showing leadership and ideas in a crisis situation' or was moved sideways to 'help another department in crisis'

While us poor engineering types gathered up the pieces and made something that we should have done in the first place ....which the new mangler took credit for in their attempt to go up the ladder.....

[David M]

Will it help to fine the bank?

I'm not clear how taking £48.6 million away from the bank is going to help them to improve. Won't this just impact their customers, in reduced services and/or lower investment returns? It seems to me that we should be directly punishing those responsible, rather than the bank. A year of community service for whoever made the decisions and/or ignored the warnings might make those in a similar position in other organisations sit up and think.

[yetanotheraoc]

Re: Will it help to fine the bank?

It's to encourage the other banks not to do the same thing.