UK regulators have imposed an £81,000 nice on a former TSB info officer over the financial institution’s IT meltdown in 2018 that left hundreds of thousands of shoppers locked out of their accounts.

The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) stated Carlos Abarca, who was TSB’s chief info officer on the time of the meltdown, “did not take affordable steps” to make sure that an outsourcing agency owned by TSB’s dad or mum firm was prepared to hold out the IT migration of shoppers en masse.

The nice towards Abarca comes months after the financial institution itself was fined £48m in December for “widespread and critical” failings associated to the debacle, which arose throughout its separation from its former dad or mum firm, Lloyds Banking Group.

Abarca is the one TSB government up to now to be held personally accountable by regulators for the IT migration failure.

The Financial institution of England declined to remark when requested whether or not any investigations into different bosses have been going down. It may go away the door open for additional fines towards administrators and executives who have been working at TSB on the time of the meltdown.

Paul Pester was pressured to resign as TSB’s chief government inside months of the incident, after intense criticism from regulators and MPs.

The nice for Abarca is without doubt one of the few issued below the UK regulatory senior managers’ regime, which goals to carry bosses personally accountable when issues go incorrect.

Abarca had been chargeable for ensuring TSB was following the PRA’s outsourcing guidelines, and had been managing the financial institution’s relationship with its important third-party provider for its IT migration programme.

The regulator stated Abarca gave assurances to the board, telling them the provider was prepared for the migration in early 2018, however did this earlier than he had obtained satisfactory assurances from the provider itself. It resulted in chaos for hundreds of thousands of shoppers, who have been locked out of their accounts for weeks after the incident started in April 2018, with some nonetheless going through points in December that yr.

Abarca left TSB a yr later, in December 2019, earlier than becoming a member of TSB’s Spanish dad or mum firm, Sabadell, as its chief expertise officer. He stepped down from Sabadell earlier this yr.

“Senior managers have a necessary function to play in making certain that companies handle and supervise outsourcing successfully,” stated the PRA’s chief government, Sam Woods. “On this case, the PRA has fined Abarca as a result of his administration of a key outsourcing relationship fell beneath the usual we count on.”

The PRA decreased Abarca’s nice by 30% after he agreed to settle the matter. The nice would have in any other case been £116,600.