ECB messaging project delay cost Bank of England 23M

"The European Central Bank's (ECB) decision to delay its move to a new messaging standard in 2022 ended up costing the Bank of England £23 million as it was forced to adjust migration to a new settlement system to avoid compounding risks. The UK central bank's £431 million project to move to a Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system was largely a success, according to spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO), despite being replanned four times and seeing costs increase by £56 million beyond the original contingency plans."

""Consultation with RTGS users found that having the two migrations so close to each other resulted in too high a level of change for users to manage safely," the NAO said. "The bank therefore decided to defer its migration date and launch date for the new system. The 2020 business case highlighted the possibility of such an external 'shock' occurring, and that it would require additional funding.""

The Bank of England's project to replace its settlement system with a Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system began planning in 2016 and provides settlement services for sterling payments worth around £790 billion daily. The program cost an estimated £431 million, was replanned four times, and exceeded original contingency by about £56 million. An external shock — the ECB's delay of its move to the ISO 20022 messaging standard — forced the bank to delay and replan in winter 2022-23, adding about £23 million. Despite delays and cost increases, the RTGS modernization was largely successful.

Read at Theregister