Disaster-struck TSB set to lose three of its executives
Three top TSB executives are set to retire from the bank, which is still recovering from an IT meltdown that has cost it more than £176m to date.
Treasurer Ian Firth and chief marketing officer Nigel Gilbert are both retiring at the end of next month, TSB confirmed today.
Current marketing director Pete Markey will take over from Gilbert while long-time deputy treasurer Alison Straszewski will succeed Firth, if both appointments receive regulatory approval.
HR director Rachel Lock will leave her role at the end of November, with nobody lined up as a replacement yet.
TSB said the departures have been planned for a long time.
However, they come after TSB’s leadership endured waves of criticism over its handling of its botched IT upgrade in April, an outage that prevented customers from accessing digital banking services for weeks.
The bank’s services are still not back to normal, with the bank recruiting more than 1,800 people and redeploying a further 700 staff into customer-facing roles to deal with customer enquiries last month.
“Our focus remains on minimising the level of future service interruptions for our customers,” TSB said at the time.
MP Nicky Morgan, chair of the Treasury committee, said in June that she had lost confidence in chief executive Paul Pester’s ability to repair the damage, citing poor customer communications and questioning his Commons testimony.
“The Treasury committee, therefore, has lost confidence in Pester’s position as chief executive of TSB, and considers that the TSB board should give serious consideration as to whether his position is sustainable,” she said.
More than 26,000 TSB customers switched their bank accounts to another provider in its second quarter, but another 20,000 signed up with the bank. Its accounts took a £107m hit from the IT disaster in the first six months of the year.
Today’s announcement of high level departures also saw the bank welcome Tesco veteran George Gordon in as director of communications and corporate affairs.
“Rachel, Nigel and Ian have been with TSB since the early days when we brought TSB back to high streets across the UK,” said Pester. “I’m incredibly grateful for everything they have done to support TSB and I wish them all the best for the future.
“I’m also delighted to welcome Alison, Pete and George to the leadership team at TSB and look forward to working with them.”