TSB's chief information officer during the British bank's incredible week-long 2018 meltdown didn't check the key supplier responsible for the migration was prepared to push the button before he assured the board they were, regulators found yesterday.

The Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) fined Carlos Abarca £81,000 ($101,000) after making its decision.

Abarca is the only exec to be singled out in the debacle, although the bank has already coughed up a total of £48.6 million ($60 million) for the botched platform migration, which is estimated to have cost the company £200 million and CEO Paul Pester his job.

In December, the bank was fined a total of £48.6 million ($60 million) for failures in operational risk management and governance by both the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the PRA. TSB's IT failings were "widespread and serious," said Mark Steward, FCA exec chief of enforcement, at the time.

The botched move happened around five years ago, when TSB hauled all of its customers off the Lloyds Banking Group's IT platform and onto new owner Sabadell's equivalent, Proteo4UK, in April 2018. The migration left 1.9 million customers unable to view their accounts, some of whom had money disappear, couldn't pay their bills, or were able to view other people's accounts.

Sabadell Information Systems Limited, or Sabis, Sabadell's IT arm, was the prime contractor for the program, although the PRA referred to it in much of the documentation as the "third party" because TSB had an outsourcing relationship with Sabis UK that the PRA said Abarca was responsible for, along with "TSB's operational relationships with third parties in relation to IT."

TSB had previously split from Lloyds Banking Group in 2013 and was sold to Sabadell in 2015 for £1.7 billion.

The bank ultimately had to bring IBM on board to fix the problems.

The PRA said Abarca broke Senior Manager Conduct Rule 2 when he "failed to take reasonable steps to ensure that TSB adequately managed and supervised appropriately its outsourcing arrangement in relation to its 2018 IT migration programme."

It said that:

Sam Woods, PRA CEO, said: "Senior managers have an essential role to play in ensuring that firms manage and supervise outsourcing effectively. In this case, the PRA has fined Mr Abarca because his management of a key outsourcing relationship fell below the standard we expect."

The Bank of England elaborated in its final notice to Abarca [PDF]:

The ex-CIO agreed to settle during the discount stage of the PRA investigation, and so qualified for a 30 percent settlement discount, meaning he paid £81,000 instead of the £116,600 he would otherwise have paid. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2023/04/14/ex_cio_tsb_fine/