You mean, transition from a fully working COBOL system that their former parent company is happily using, to a modern one that shows NullPointerException to the end user?

> happily using

Not sure you can say they are 'happily' using the agglomeration of bolt on systems that they have pulled in over the years.

There's remnants of Cheltenham and Gloucester, Halifax, Bank of Scotland, TSB (now spun out), Scottish Widows, Standard Chartered Bank (IIRC) and I think some parts of Abbey National.

Those are just the one I remember and some of those are comprised of a mish mash of prior systems.

Keeping all that going is likely a huge burden. Indeed, they charged TSB £100 million a year just to emulate TSB's part of the system so TSB could just keep using that until their subsequent merger.

Lloyd’s is up, TSB is still down AFAIK. They’re happy alright...

Santander bought Abbey National. Did some of it end up in TSB somehow?

I just looked it up - I got confused as it was Abbey Life not Abbey National.