'Woolly mammoth' TSB is rocked by new online outage

TSB’s claims of being a challenger bank to the big four of Barclays, Lloyds, NatWest and HSBC, have taken yet another blow after a fresh online outage, which has led one expert to predict that it is just a matter of time before the bank “goes the way of the woolly mammoth”.
Customers were hit by a fresh glitch on Tuesday – just over two months since an IT migration cock-up left the bank’s systems in chaos for weeks – with many unable to access their accounts.
The initial meltdown exposed a tsumani of data governance issues, including a leak of personal details of customers, TSB telling other companies that their customers had died and soaring fraud.
It also emerged that in in the midst of the meltdown, the bank opened a new current account and sent a debit card to a man who had passed away in November 2017.
The bank apologised for the latest outage and said the problems had been resolved.
“We’re really sorry that some of our customers experienced intermittent issues with online banking for a short period this morning,” a TSB spokesperson said. “This issue has now been fixed and our services are working as normal. Customers were still able to use their cards as normal throughout. We’d like to apologise to our customers for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
Ian Matthews, data evangelist at NGDATA, said: “Modern consumers expect every digital experience to work seamlessly the first time round. However, in this case, TSB hasn’t been able to deliver. With plenty of challenger banks putting digital first and delivering advanced, in-demand features and excellent customer experiences, it’s going to be tough for the big traditional retail banks to keep up without a real focus on omni-channel experience.
“If banks can’t modernise and provide the kind of services and experiences that customers are demanding, they risk losing relevance in the market. Without a flawless digital presence it’s impossible to truly engage your customers, let alone the next generation of digital natives.
“As we’ve seen in the retail sector, the financial services landscape today is forcing businesses to evolve or die. It’s now just a matter of time to see whether TSB will be going the way of the woolly mammoth.”