TSB IT crisis: Is IT governance strong enough in banking should be the question MPs ask

MPs will probably focus on customer compensation and how TSB will make things right when the Treasury select committee grills TSB and Sabadell leaders about the current IT disaster at the bank, but perhaps IT governance should be one of the main issues to address.

MPs are the peoples’ representatives in government so they should indeed ask TSB what it will do to make things right.

I have listened to many IT related select committee meetings and it is always clear that most MPs have little understanding of IT. Why should they?

But I think there should be some questions about IT governance in there. Banking IT projects of the scale of the TSB migration are incredibly complex. Moving accounts from legacy systems, unpicking all the interdependencies, and putting them in a news system gives me a headache just thinking about it.

Consider the amount of checking, double checking, and triple checking that goes on. In an age of software development which is more akin to building Lego blocks enforcing strict IT governance is tough. But certainly necessary. Problems keep happening in the industry so more questions need to be asked about how IT projects are managed.

We will probably find out in a year or so after an inquiry what went wrong and it will be interesting to see if better IT governance could have prevented it.

Today at 14.30 the treasury select committee will quiz three people over the IT crash.

Paul Pester, CEO at TSB, the bank’s chairman Richard Meddings, as well as Miquel Montes, chief operating officer at TSB parent, Sabadell, will face the music.

You can watch it live here.

Read more about the TSB IT migration disaster

• TSB customers have experienced a weekend of problems with online banking services as the bank migrates from Lloyds Bank systems to its new core banking system.
• The Information Commissioner’s Office and the Financial Conduct Authority are assessing the IT meltdown at TSB that led to some customer accounts being seen by other customers.
• TSB’s very public IT problems will send shivers down the spine of IT teams at large banks that are yet to migrate to new core banking systems.
• TSB chaos: When choosing a bank, people should look at core banking platform and not just funky apps.
• TSB customers are still experiencing problems using online and mobile banking services after almost a week of disruption.
• TSB’s IT problems have moved into a second week as the bank fights to get its services and reputation back on track.