UK regulators have imposed an £81,000 high quality on a former TSB data 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 data officer on the time of the meltdown, “did not take affordable steps” to make sure that an outsourcing agency owned by TSB’s guardian firm was prepared to hold out the IT migration of shoppers en masse.

The high quality 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 guardian 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 had been going down. It may depart the door open for additional fines towards administrators and executives who had been working at TSB on the time of the meltdown.

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

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

Abarca had been accountable for ensuring TSB was following the PRA’s outsourcing guidelines, and had been managing the financial institution’s relationship with its predominant 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 enough assurances from the provider itself. It resulted in chaos for hundreds of thousands of shoppers, who had been locked out of their accounts for weeks after the incident started in April 2018, with some nonetheless dealing with points in December that 12 months.

Abarca left TSB a 12 months later, in December 2019, earlier than becoming a member of TSB’s Spanish guardian firm, Sabadell, as its chief know-how officer. He stepped down from Sabadell earlier this 12 months.

“Senior managers have an important position to play in guaranteeing that corporations 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 lowered Abarca’s high quality by 30% after he agreed to settle the matter. The high quality would have in any other case been £116,600.