We must do better, admits new TSB boss

As she shuts down branches and sheds staff...

THE boss of troubled TSB has admitted its performance is ‘not good enough’ as she confessed to being ‘disappointed’ by its latest IT meltdown.

Debbie Crosbie, who was drafted in seven months ago to turn around the bank’s fortunes, said TSB was ‘going to get better’ after a glitch on Friday meant many customers did not receive their wages on time.

The bank suffered a spectacular technology failure last year when almost 2m customers were locked out of their online accounts, some for weeks.

The ordeal is said to have strained ties between TSB and its Spanish parent company, Banco Sabadell.

Although Crosbie (pictured below) said the larger group had been ‘supportive’, she yesterday refused to rule out the possibility that Sabadell may decide to sell TSB.

Crosbie said: ‘Nobody can ever rule anything out, but Sabadell Group have reiterated that they are very committed to this being a core part of the business for the foreseeable future.

‘I have had extensive support and engagement with the group. They are very focused on making TSB successful.’

The bank’s brand, she added, was still trusted and ‘has proved very resilient’.

In a statement, Sabadell’s chief executive Jaime Guardiola said TSB ‘is a key lever to improve our profitability going forward’.

Crosbie, who took over after Paul Pester was ousted as boss earlier this year, also announced that the bank was embarking on a major cost-cutting drive after revealing that its business is around a third more expensive to run than its competitors.

Whereas its major rivals spend around 64pc of their income on running costs, it pays out 85pc.

To help get costs down, TSB said it would axe 86 branches by the end of next year and cut between 300 and 400 jobs. Under Crosbie, it wants to save £100m by 2022. But many customers will be left with little choice but to use online banking more frequently – a worrying prospect after TSB’s disastrous outage last year.

Crosbie said she was committed to ensuring ‘100pc service availability’ as she unveiled the bank’s strategic plan, and promised to invest more than £120m in TSB’s digital technology.

‘Increasingly customers are online, and what’s very important is that we invest in our online services to make sure we provide the customer choice that our customers are telling us they want,’ she added. The bank will still have a job on its hands to entirely avoid more online glitches. A report from consumer group Which? revealed that over the last year, banks were hit by IT problems five times a week. Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander had the worst record, experiencing 18 errors each over the last year. TSB was hit with its first major outage last year, when it tried to transfer its IT systems over from

Lloyds Bank – its old owner – to a new platform run by Sabadell.

But there were several flaws with the strategy, and 1.9m customers were barred from accessing their own online banking services. TSB claimed it had learned from this disaster, but on Friday, chunks of customers failed to receive their wages after a ‘processing error’.

Crosbie said: ‘You’ll all imagine how disappointed I was, given the timing, that due to a processing error on Friday some customers didn’t receive payments until just before midday.

‘We resolved that very promptly, and we are making sure no customer is out of pocket.’ But many are still confused as to how they may claim money back.

A customer named Craig Taylor tweeted the bank last night saying: ‘I have been taken into my overdraft from my joint account I use to pay bills (not with TSB) due to the late processing of payments a few days ago. Firstly how can I receive reimbursement and secondly compensation?’