London (awp/afp) – The British bank TSB Bank, a subsidiary of the Spanish Sabadell, was fined this Tuesday in the United Kingdom 48.7 million pounds for a serious computer failure that had deprived many customers of accessing its services in 2018 banking.

“The failures in this case were widespread and serious, which had a real impact on the daily life of a significant part of TSB’s clients, including those who were vulnerable,” Mark Steward, official of the financial regulator (FCA) summarized in Press release.

TSB had updated its IT systems in April 2018, migrating its customer data to a new platform that immediately suffered technical failures and interrupted office, telephone and online services.

All of the bank’s branches and a significant portion of its 5.2 million customers were affected, some for months: it took until December 2018 for the bank to return to normal.

According to the FCA and banking regulator PRA, which jointly imposed the fine, the bank misorganized the client migration program and mismanaged the operational risks associated with outsourcing IT services to an external provider.

“We would like to apologize again to the customers” affected, the bank’s CEO Robin Bulloch reacted this Tuesday in a press release, assuring that the company has since transformed, using technology “to offer new products and better services” .

The bank paid £32.7 million in compensation to its clients who suffered damages in this case.

TSB worked with regulators, who consequently applied a 30% reduction to the nearly £70m fine they would otherwise have imposed on the bank, the FCA said in its statement.

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