CLYDESDALE and Yorkshire banking group chief operating officer Debbie Crosbie is defecting to lead its rival TSB on a salary of around £1 million as the lender tries to overcome the legacy of a costly IT fiasco.
Read more: TSB boss leaves amid IT woes for challenger bank
Spanish owned TSB said Ms Crosbie will become chief executive of the bank in 2019 after 20 years at Clydesdale and its parent group, during which she has played a key role in their development.
As acting chief executive of CYBG for four months in 2015, Ms Crosbie led the preparations for its demerger from National Australia Bank and flotation on the stock exchange.
She has served as chief operating officer of CYBG since David Duffy joined as chief executive in June 2015.
If her appointment by TSB is approved by the regulator, Ms Crosbie will become one of the only female chief executives of a UK lender.
The appointment was announced by TSB around 10 weeks after the bank said it was parting company with former chief executive Paul Pester in the wake of a botched IT upgrade in April.
Read more: City regulator tells of 'frank exchange' over TSB chaos
This saw many people using TSB’s digital and mobile banking temporarily locked out of their accounts after the bank migrated customers from systems inherited from its former owner Lloyds Banking Group to a new one.
TSB recorded £176m post-migration costs in the first half including customer compensation and additional staffing charges.
The bank said yesterday the appointment of Ms Crosbie was a key step towards the fulfilment of the recovery plan it set out in September.
The priorities set then included completing the work of putting things right for customers and achieving full functionality across all products and services.
The bank’s chairman Richard Meddings said Ms Crosbie had stood out from a strong field of more than 30 candidates, four of whom made the final short list.
“You could not design a better chief executive for TSB than Debbie Crosbie,” he said.
Noting that Ms Crosbie had spent 20 years working for banks that were taking on bigger players, he added: “She has a very good challenger mentality. It’s a different kind of vigour than you get if you run one of the big retail banks.”
Read more: Clydesdale for the axe following Virgin Money deal
He said Ms Crosbie combined valuable experience of running technology, customer innovation and transformation with an excellent leadership style that would fit well with the values of TSB.
Asked if Ms Crosbie would have to focus on system issues rather than growth initiatives, Mr Meddings said TSB had been making good progress tackling the problems that arose in April.
It has dealt with around 120,000 complaints, two thirds of the total received.
He said the TSB brand may have been bruised but absolutely was not fractured by this year’s problems.
Ms Crosbie said she had long admired TSB and had huge respect for its values and culture. “The exciting thing about TSB is just how much potential the bank has to redefine banking to better serve customers,” she observed.
The challenges the Strathclyde university graduate will face will include helping TSB to maintain what is a relatively strong position in Scotland.
Market research firm Kantar TNS found in June that TSB ranked third in Scotland, with 13 per cent of main personal current accounts, against 22% for Lloyds-owned Bank of Scotland and 19% for RBS.
TSB has 155 branches in Scotland, against 181 when Sabadell bought it in 2015, and 1,070 employees in Scotland. Mr Meddings said TSB intends to maintain a major physical presence through branches in the country in the expectation the human touch will help it win business.
CYBG chief executive David Duffy said the group was disappointed to lose someone of Ms Crosbie’s calibre noting her leadership of its technology programme had created one of the UK's leading banking platforms.
Banking sector veteran Fraser Ingram will act as CYBG's chief operating officer pending the appointment of a replacement.
TSB said Ms Crosbie’s salary will be slightly higher than Mr Pester’s without giving details. She will be eligible for a performance related bonus.
Mr Pester earned a basic salary of £913,500 last year, with a £200,000 role-based allowance on top.
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