TSB’s new owners should have seen this computer catastrophe coming

The systems breakdown at TSB is not (yet) the worst UK bank computer cock-up of all time: that prize is held by RBS, whose problems in 2012 afflicted customers for a month and attracted a £56 million fine. But the failure of TSB to migrate four million customers’ accounts from systems bequeathed by its former parent Lloyds to a streamlined IT structure, designed by new Spanish owner Banco Sabadell, is surely the fiasco that has been longest foreseen.

It dates from 2009, when Brussels insisted that Lloyds dispose of part of its branch network as a condition for the bailout that followed its acquisition of HBOS during the financial crisis. This was ‘Project Verde’: the plan was to rebadge 632 former Lloyds TSB and Cheltenham & Gloucester branches as ‘TSB’ and sell them to the Co-operative Bank — which turned out to have such troubles of its own that it was incapable of completing the deal.