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TSB charged a dead person fees for missing a mortgage payment and told another borrower not to buy clothes or school meals for their children, UK regulators said as they fined the bank £10.9mn for failing to treat struggling customers fairly.

The Financial Conduct Authority said on Thursday that TSB’s “inadequate processes” between 2014 and 2020 had “created a real risk that repayment plans were not realistic” for customers.

The fine comes as a hostile takeover bid for TSB’s Spanish owner Sabadell by bigger rival BBVA has reignited a debate about the future of the UK lender, which six years ago suffered one of the biggest IT outages in the sector that left 2mn customers locked out of their accounts.

The FCA said on Thursday that TSB’s employees did not receive sufficient training and were “potentially encouraged by incentive schemes to prioritise the number of plans made over taking enough time to assess individual customer circumstances”.

TSB, which brands itself as “local banking for Britain”, told one woman struggling with her mortgage she could skip buying clothes or school lunches for her children as it put her on a repayment plan she could not afford.

“As a result of its failings, TSB risked agreeing unaffordable payment arrangements with customers in difficulty or charging them inappropriate fees,” the FCA found.

The FCA said TSB charged fees for a missed mortgage payment by a customer who had died “where there was no grant of probate or personal representative in place, meaning that there was no prospect of repayment activity taking place on the account at that time”.

In another case, TSB sued a customer after mistakenly treating their large payment as a debit rather than a credit, which pushed them over the bank’s automatic threshold for litigation of customers in arrears.

In total, more than 200,000 mortgage, overdraft, credit card and loan customers were affected, paying the bank almost £260mn in fees and interest, the FCA said. The Sabadell-owned high street bank has paid nearly £100mn in redress costs as a result.

“TSB’s woeful systems and controls exposed its customers to risk of harm and meant it missed opportunity after opportunity to do the right thing,” said Therese Chambers, the FCA’s joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight.

The fine comes as the regulator is increasing its focus on the fair treatment of customers through a new “consumer duty” regime introduced in July 2023.

TSB, which was carved out of Lloyds Banking Group after the financial crisis, floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2014, with the ambition of challenging the dominance of UK high street banks.

It aimed to capitalise on customers’ distrust of legacy banks and made a point of scrapping internal sales targets and offering customers higher interest rates. Less than a year later, it was bought by Sabadell in a £1.7bn deal.

TSB now has about 5mn customers and a £36bn loan book.

TSB said these were historic issues and that the lender had contacted all affected customers to “apologise and reimburse them for not providing the level of service we should have.”

“We fixed the underlying issues some time ago and have considerably enhanced our support for customers experiencing financial difficulty,” they added.

The lender co-operated with the FCA and qualified for a 30 per cent discount on a fine that otherwise would have been £15.6mn.

TSB ranked 13th out of 15 for service quality in an industry-wide customer survey by Ipsos last year, and said this year that it would close 36 of its 200 branches and cut 250 jobs from a total of more than 5,000.

The Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI) has appointed Neil Atkinson as a new member of its board.

The board of directors is comprised of representatives who are typically drawn from the financial services sector and meet four to five times a year.

Atkinson is Euroclear managing director (MD) and global client executive. Prior to that he was HSBC MD, global head, platform solutions.

He has over 30 years financial services experience and specialises in capital markets, post trade, financial market infrastructure and clearing and settlement.

Atkinson is a CISI chartered fellow, member of the CISI membership and international committees, and has received a Leader Coach Accreditation from the Association for Coaching.

CISI chair Michael Cole-Fontayn said: “We are delighted to welcome Neil to the CISI board of directors.

“We look forward to his support and leadership as we continue to grow our global membership, promoting lifelong learning, qualifications, standards, trust and the importance of professionalism.”

In July 2024, the CISI announced it is working with The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) to support actuaries in their understanding of ethical issues when deploying artificial intelligence (AI).

This means the IFoA’s 32,000+ members can now study for the CISI certificate in ethical AI.

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The UK government published its long-promised package of reforms to worker rights on Thursday, billed as the biggest overhaul to employment law in a generation.

The legislation presented to parliament includes 28 policies such as day one employment rights, abolishing fire and rehire and modernising trade union laws.

In delivering the employment rights bill, Labour has met its manifesto promise to legislate on its “plan to make work pay” within 100 days of the general election. But in doing so it has left many of the big decisions for later.

Secondary legislation means delays

Workers will have to wait up to two years for many of the proposed new employment rights to kick in, ministers have confirmed.

Primary legislation will enable some of the measures to take effect quickly, but most will not come into effect before 2026 or later because of the need for secondary legislation, which is scrutinised by lawmakers.

Policy details will require consultations

The broad scope of the package means the government must now embark on myriad consultations on various aspects of the policies, including:

• What is the right level of statutory sick pay for low earners?

• Can plans to prohibit contracts that do not guarantee a minimum number of hours — billed as a “ban on exploitative zero-hours contracts” — work?

• How should trade union laws be updated?

• How should the parental leave system be reformed?

• How will a new “fair pay agreement” for social care work? 

With input from unions, companies, business groups and other stakeholders such as charities and think-tanks, responding to the consultations will take months or years.

New hires can expect 9-month probation

Companies will be able to keep new hires on probation for as long as nine months in a last-minute concession by ministers to business. 

The government’s promise to introduce basic individual rights from day one for all workers will end an existing two-year qualifying period for protection against some forms of unfair dismissal, and a one-year wait for parental leave.

Workers will now obtain immediate rights to paternity leave and unpaid parental leave, as well as some protection from unfair dismissal. 

But employers will be able to dismiss employees by following a “lighter touch” process to justify concerns about performance during a probation process that will for the first time be put on a statutory footing.

Jonathan Reynolds, business secretary, said last month that probation was likely to be capped at a period of about six months. But after intense lobbying from business leaders backed by chancellor Rachel Reeves the government has said its preference will now be for a nine month limit. 

Businesses have concerns, while unions are broadly pleased

The most hostile reaction to the legislation has come from small businesses, which are more likely to struggle under the weight of new red tape.

Tina McKenzie, policy chair at the Federation of Small Businesses trade body, described the bill as “a rushed job, clumsy, chaotic and poorly planned”.

Larger business groups have concerns but welcomed the government’s commitment to consult widely on the more contentious changes.

Peter Cheese, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said the trade body shared the government’s ambition to raise employment standards and “was pleased to see the ongoing commitment to engage with the business community”.

Unions were broadly delighted with the package of reforms. But they urged ministers to ignore calls from business leaders to further water down the policies.

Gary Smith, GMB general secretary, said the government “won a huge mandate” in July for its “plan to make work pay”. “Now they must make sure unions and workers are front and centre of the detailed discussions needed to deliver it,” he added.

Enforcement will be key

Ultimately, the success of the reforms will depend on whether the government can make the new rules stick by beefing up enforcement.

The bill provides for the creation of a Fair Work Agency, which will take on the work done by existing agencies to enforce the statutory minimum wage, tackle exploitation and regulate agency workers. It will also provide a mechanism for the first time to enforce holiday pay.

But it is not yet clear how much funding will be available to bolster the new agency’s resources. Its powers and remit also still need to be determined through consultation and further regulation, meaning that it is unlikely to be fully up and running for some years.