Half the team at the heart of the RBS disaster WERE in India
Cost-cutting RBS management had halved the team within which the banking group's recent data disaster happened, sources have told The Register. The sacked British employees were replaced by staff in India, and there had been concerns about the quality of the work done in India for a lengthy period prior to last week's …
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Re: One, two, three, jump! But where?
Like others here, I jumped to Nationwide a while back (just after the run on Northern Rock) but I'd hardly call them perfect. Their current account is free and competent with decent enough internet access. And of course, they weathered the crisis with relative ease, taking in a number of smaller building societies who were not so strong.
Incidentally, I jumped from Barclays, the one major British bank who didn't go cap in hand to the government for a bail out. So, they may also be a good bet for a jump (in spite of current controversies).
commission free foreign currency withdrawals...
Yes, I didn't like that either. In other respects —modulo all bankers are bastards I would trust futher than I could throw 'em— Nationwide havn't been bad.
But commission free foreign currency withdrawals were worth having for me. And don't try to persuade me that 'free' travel insurance is compensation, a) it overlaps with the same I get on the Alliance and Leicester account, b) it dosn't cover me for the kind of travel I do; if I need something I buy the right tool for the job not rely on free toys.
Re: One, two, three, jump! But where?
Not arguing with the offshoring and outsourcing concerns but as for the replacement of their core banking platform with SAP: that project is not complete yet nor live so in fact the old mainframe still does *all* of the work.
The other banks have to go through their core ledger replacement at some point in the future. As others have said, time will tell with Nationwide's transformations, but you can't say they haven't been warned...
Re: One, two, three, jump! But where?
Even after the SAP 'replacement' banking engine goes live the old legacy system will still do a lot of the core processing as it was all descoped after the SAP project ran late, and over budget without delivering. The new platform which was supposed to replace the legacy system to reduce costs will now run in parallel, meaning increased support costs.
Re: One, two, three, jump! But where?
HSBC, HBOS, RBS, Lloyds, Barclays et al have to keep the sahreholders happy
Which is probably a lot of us here, P45'd away over the years and left with PAYE sharesave schemes.
When RBS reaches £20/share, even after the recent share consolidation, only then will I break even.
So yes, more for the share holders, please.
I have always wondered why the management of organisations such as RBS ignore the advice of IT staff on these sort of issues.
Because management are brought up on cost benefit analysis, and can't see the benefit of spending all that money that IT demands for something that has such a low probability of happening.
Of cause what they fail to understand is that the low value of a probability of a catastrophic failure is due to maintaining the current spending and that reducing the spend will increase he chance of such a failure.
It's a two way problem
The management only think in cost-benefit analysis.
The IT guys can't quantify what they do in management terms.
The answer lies in the phrase: "IT teams in areas considered non-critical had suffered redundancies of 50-70 per cent".
They simply don't understand that so much of their "banking" industry is now IT.
IT People aren't Banking People so they're not "core business". They don't know about banking.
Beer. Need Beer.
Re: It's a two way problem
True, but... management do indeed think only about cost-benefit, but surely that's an admission of culpability. It is utterly inexcusable for managers not to understand what they're dealing with. If an IT end-to-end service delivery assurance implementation deploymant compliance whatever manager's IT skills start and end at Microsoft Office when they're supposed to be responsible for enterprise-level systems and platforms, then that's a clear indication that they're not fit to do their job, no matter how nice an MBA they've got.
Why should technical people have to quantify what they do in idiotic management speak? When you're in management, you're in charge; and you should make the bloody effort to understand what you're dealing with. Expecting the reverse is slipshod, incompetent and downright lazy.
OK, I know that ain't gonna change overnight, but still...
Re: It's a two way problem
now they can quantify it - "If you eliminate your UK IT folk who are familiar with your system, your bank will do an RBS within 24 months." 1 RBS = 4 days outage = x billions in damages to bottom line.
Re: It's a two way problem
Is there a new Register Unit waiting to be defined? The RBS - a measure of system downtime, where 1 RBS = 4 days of system outage
They always have, traditionally IT department heads have not been good at communicating with the main business, especially at the higher levels. A few times when I've seen good communication the main board did *not* want to hear the message....... go figure.
Sadly proven competence and relevant business experience and knowledge don't appear on balance sheets anywhere.
"IT People aren't Banking People..."
It's worse than that at my place of employment. Not only are IT people not Banking People, but they're frequently not seen by anyone as Management People either.
Management are simply required to be able to deal effectively with people; outside of IT techies are seen to not have any interpersonal communication skills.
Some of the most creative, forward-thinking people I know have been techies yet once they reach a certain level within our organisation they face hitting a glass ceiling. HR are desperate to remove glass ceilings based on sex, race, religion or sexuality yet don't seem to care about the one that causes techies to get bored doing the same job at the same level for the same pay year after year before they eventually quit and go work elsewhere.
Despite, as you say, so much of the banking industry now being IT, there are very few (i.e. none) senior managers or executives who either still are or were once techies; they simply know enough IT buzzwords to bluff their way through the recruitment process.
Anonymous Coward because I'm already in enough trouble at work as it is.
Re: It's a two way problem
Pedantry, but there was not a four day outage.
There's been 10 days of massive impact and inconvenience, but they were still taking money out of your account on time, therefore there wasn't four days of "outage".
Re: It's a two way problem
The duration of any technical or systemic problems is hardly of concern to those who have been affected. Call it what you will, but there was a >4 day loss of service to many retail clients. Trying to argue otherwise flies in the face of any argument here about IT people not being listened to.
Because the management get an idea about how they make savings/get bonus, then they ask their in-house experts who disagree, so they get into a cycle of asking the same question to people of decreasing expertise and increasing vested interest (eg outsourcing supplier) until they the answer they want to hear. Delighted because they've finally been proven right they blunder on and sign a deal as fast as possible before someone *higher up* changes their mind. Forget about *Due Diligence* - sign the deal Kerching!
Seems like the spirit of Fred the Shred lives on in RBS
Re: It's a two way problem
I'd say that its an outage of between 2 and three RBS's then :)
Re: The IT guys can't quantify what they do in management terms.
That's not always true.
A few years ago, one of the newly minted PHB's had ideas of heading "toward the cloud"; which was not ever in the CIO's vision for the company.
The day for the PHB's C level presentation came, and IT came "loaded for bear". Newly minted PHB put on his 'dog and pony show', and got a few C level types interest up. Then it was IT's turn.
Metaphorically speaking, our CIO "blasted that turkey" as if she was carrying a 10 gauge shotgun loaded with 4/0 buck. His "plan" ended up so 'full of holes', it resembled Swiss Cheese. Needless to say, newly minted PHB was promoted to a new position with one of our competitors.
Flames, because it was fun watching him "crash and burn".
Re: "IT People aren't Banking People..."
In my place of work, and I'm being very anonymous about it here, it seems that management don't give a stuff about the average hard working IT person. We are just "resources" to be used as they see fit.
We've just had a department re-shuffle after a series of redundancies, you know the osrt of think, a bit of bum shifting at the top table which means bugger all to averyone else but it's hyped up as a big and important change. The boss of my team adimitted that he didn't know anything technical. Well, I'm sorry, what the f**k are you doing in IT then?
I was involved in a crisis meeting a few days ago, you know, get 30 people on a conference call to try and found out what's gone wrong with a system and how to fix it. The person running the call (let's call him an Incident Maanger), had to also be on an executive call, so they could give us advice on how to proceed. WTF? I understand giving the execs an update and looking for guidance, but getting advice from them? Most of them can't see over the pyle of their executive carpet.
...oh and the problem....
Caused by an Indian person installing a piece of software that was still meant to be in test....took six hours to find....
Goes to show, you can have all the procedures, maangement control and signoff, red tape, but an implementation can still stuff up because the person doing it is inexperienced, and because everything is so complex now, impossible to find when it goes wrong.
Re: new `Register Unit`
Allow me to piggyback on that one, please.
If you accept the "RBS" as a system downtime measure, then it would follow, that "RB$" could represent the value of that lost downtime.
Re: "IT People aren't Banking People..."
"The boss of my team adimitted that he didn't know anything technical. Well, I'm sorry, what the f**k are you doing in IT then?"
He needs to be able to manage. People, budgets, resources, not be a techie. His job isn't tech, its management. He needs to be good enough that people can be honest about the tech with him, so he can make the right decisions.
Re: "IT People aren't Banking People..."
Was this an incident manager organising a non-technical call and then asking the techie what the problem is and how it's being fixed? "But we don't want to hear technical details". Well like duhhh... you have a technical problem that requires a technical solution...
Anyone want to cast the runes ?
Already the government has started asking awkward questions.
The FSA has wobbled into action, and will not doubt start asking other banks to demonstrate that this couldn't happen to them.
As the court cases start piling in (I have read of more than one house sale that could not be completed due to this, so a few hotel bills will start to come in) will the board come under attack ? If it can be proven their actions lead to this (on a balance of probablities) ?
Already my companys directors have started asking questions and seeking reassurances. I'm sure a fair few posters here will have been tasked with some sort of review, to settle their directors.
Re: Anyone want to cast the runes ?
"have read of more than one house sale that could not be completed" ... "hotel bills"
... that might not just be a case of hotel bills, that could presumably be a case of "loss of deposit", and therefore in the 10k (and up) range.
Re: Anyone want to cast the runes ?
"The FSA has wobbled into action"
The FSA is being wound down and will not exist by the end of the year.
Re: Anyone want to cast the runes ?
Which doesn't change the fact they have started asking questions - even if they won't be here to get the answers
Re: Anyone want to cast the runes ?
House sale, loss of deposit for removals / van rental, having to rebook this (possibly with a more expensive price), storage for all of your belongings (and an associated '2nd' move from there to the new house, as I had to do when a form was held up, ironically due to IT issues...), possible loss of earnings (taking more time off work, moving mid week instead of weekend etc.), heck the sheer stress of it all!
Re: Anyone want to cast the runes ?
the harper government (right-wing fascists more inline with America's republicans and not far from the tea-party) here in Canada, is doing the samething to government services and oversight. Winding them down and closing them, because we all know that corporations can be trusted to police themselves.
I chose the Big Brother icon because although the harper government ran on a platform of transparency and openness they have, blatantly, been the most secrective and dishonest bunch of politicians we've seen in the years. Who knew you can't trust politicians?
It's abhorent that a governent owned organisation outsources anything to any other country imho.
Part of the deal when RBS was given all that money was that the government would not interfere with the running of the bank.
re. 'deal'
So, RBS agreed to let the government pour money into them, provided the government didn't interfere with the future running of RBS? That doesn't sound like a 'deal' to me; it's sounds like a charitable donation.
The situation was probably more complicated than that, I'm sure.
Just a cotton pickin' moment.
Part of the DEAL the RBS was GIVEN.
Isn't that like throwing a drowning man a lifebelt of his choosing and design ?
The sheer arrogance ...
Re: re. 'deal'
It was more part of the deal that the public were given - remember that there isn't a single board member still at RBS from the Fred Goodwin days - if the government own a bank, they certainly shouldn't be messing with it for short term political gain.
Part of the deal RBS was forced to take when the Government appointed THEIR preferred Chief Executive and board to run RBS, a group of executives who had a track record of outsourcing and off-shoring British jobs.
And the Government can't interfere, knowing that the then Government wouldn't be the Government much longer.
Way to go Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and the whole New Labour movement.
"It's abhorent that a governent owned organisation outsources..."
It's abhorent that government-owned organisations even exist.
@ Paul 161
Forget a government owned bank - what about a local government body (multiple)?
Certain local government activities are supplied by thrid parties who have been allowed by Boris among others to send to teams offshore, resulting in the lay off no permanent staff, but numerous short term contracts have been cancelled who pay (at least some) UK tax.. Assuming they're not doing the full Jimmy Carr.
AC as extremely close to that issue!
Good journalism
Lots of digging, that's what I like to see. Keep going until your spade hits a skeleton.
Re: this is typical of a failed society
and guess what the banks have already failed
millions of people with incorrect balances?
LIBOR FUBAR WTF?
and bankers regularly getting fucked in the ass with large amounts of free money.
i guess the bankers will be disappearing to their private bunkers before you start to wake up, by then of course, its too late.
Many years ago, I operated mainframes and we ran UCC7. Which was a very effective batch job scheduler. Then they were taken over by CA and it became CA-7. Still effective but to be frank, over the years, it became a complete camel to work with.
I can understand outsourcing to India - I've worked with developers from India for quite a while, on and off, and they can be very good indeed.
But CA-7 IS a camel and there cant be that many people around with the skills to run it, so to get rid of those who do and to replace them with those who dont seems like complete idiocy to me.
The sort of idiocy that led RBS to appoint a marketeer like Fred Goodwin to run the bank, and the sort of idiocy that Hester has sadly failed to get rid of.
There's no getting away from the fact that IT requires skills, and mainframe IT requires specialist skills. And that, in the end, you get what you pay for,
" we will fully investigate the causes of this incident. We hope people will understand that right now our complete focus is on destroying the proofs fixing this problem and helping our customers ."
Is it legal?
I was wondering whether it was legal to make a role redundant and replace it with an offshore/recently onshore individual?
* I'm sure we've all seen it happen; but anyone know the legality of this and is this why RBS are being very careful in their wording of the events that took place?
Re: Is it legal?
Also - many redundancies are in fact voluntary separations, i.e. the role is NOT made redundant, I believe that the employee leaves of their own volition... How this gets by the tax law I'm not too sure ??
Re: Is it legal?
"Also - many redundancies are in fact voluntary separations, i.e. the role is NOT made redundant, I believe that the employee leaves of their own volition... How this gets by the tax law I'm not too sure ??"
Correct. At our place, a compromise agreement is given to the (soon to be former) employee to sign (hence we call being made redundant "being compromised") rather than actual redundancy as such.
AC: Do I need to explain why?
Re: Is it legal?
And RBS set it all up nicely.
First they had an arbitary downgrade of all grades at the end of the year. They also had the bell curve, what this did was to put a lot of staff that came in and did their day to day work but didn't want to get involved in office politics or career advancement or working stupid hours into the "failing" category. It also put people that would normally have got a bonus into the "no bonus" category. We were also told that anyone getting two consecutive two's would be "managed out". (good bye payoff). No one understood the rating system either as they were given behind closed doors.
A lot of staff in their fifties were entitled to full pensions with no penalty for leaving early (ie get the pension at 50 odd that you would have got at 65). We also got a payoff of something like 3.5 x number of years service = number of weeks pay. If you were retiring you could put that lump sum into your pension and then claim 25% of your pension pot tax free. So a bloody good deal.
So generally anyone with long service who was over 50 jumped at the chance, the first wave was fully subscribed.
Anyone with with long service and a decent work history also went, it's just a case of incentivising people of else making it so miserable to work there people volunteer to leave.
It looks good for RBS because very few people have to be made compulsory redundant and they can spin the line that everyone "wanted" to go where as if they gave everyone their notice then there would be headlines in the national paper.
Glad I got out in the first wave ;-)
Re: Is it legal?
That is a great deal for those who were able to retire early with a full pension. Now they can bring you or those interested back as expensive contractors to run the system. I hope that works out for you. For the others not so good but that's becoming a common corporate prectice.
It seems clear to me that this was messed up in the UK and the blame seems to be trying to be shifted to India. Saying that, I don't think this is an ideal setup at all, having the teams separated by continents and cultures.
what seems clear to me
is that you've typed something before you've read everything.
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