Delay to European Central Bank messaging project cost the Bank of England £23M
(2025/12/15)
- Reference: 1765803009
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/12/15/ecb_messaging_project/
- Source link:
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.
The NAO reported that delays to an unrelated project at the ECB was among the causes of overspending on the Bank of England's RTGS system renewal program, which started planning in 2016 and provides settlement services for sterling payments in the UK, worth around £790 billion a day.
[1]
The second re-plan during the winter of 2022-23 was a result of an external "shock" outside the bank's control, the NAO said. "The ECB moved its migration date for the new messaging standard close to the Bank's date, creating too high a level of change for users to manage safely."
[2]
[3]
The ECB was moving to ISO 20022, a global standard for electronic data interchange in finance, which promises a single, rich, structured language for payments, replacing older formats like SWIFT MT. In October 2022, it announced a delay to its ISO migration program, putting it back to June 2023, just four weeks before the planned launch of the RTGS system.
"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," [4]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."
[5]Home Office staff still leaning on 25-year-old asylum case management system
[6]Report blasts UK Ministry of Defence over Afghan data-handling failures
[7]Digital overhaul at UK's NS&I bank is £1.3B over budget and 4 years late
[8]UK tax collector falls short on digital efficiency, watchdog says
The estimated overall cost of the RTGS program is £431 million, 15 percent above what was planned and more than the original 11 percent risk contingency. Still, the costs remained lower than the industry standard for similar projects, the NAO said.
"In our view, the bank could have considered retaining a cost range at this stage or estimating a higher contingency to factor in 'unknown' risks, to better reflect the level of uncertainty."
[9]
However, the auditors added: "The increase in cost was reasonable given the size and complexity of the program, and the number of uncertainties and risks that the bank had to manage."
In 2020, the bank contracted Accenture as its technical delivery partner. The previous RTGS relied on mainframe technology and was difficult to maintain because of its specialist hardware and the shortage of skills. The new platform is still internally hosted, but relies on "cloud-native" technologies, making it more flexible. ®
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[4] https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/bank-of-englands-real-time-gross-settlement-system-renewal-programme/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/12/uk_asylum_atlas/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/14/pac_mod_afghan_report/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/14/nsandi_nao_report/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/07/uk_tax_collector_falls_short/
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[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
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.
The NAO reported that delays to an unrelated project at the ECB was among the causes of overspending on the Bank of England's RTGS system renewal program, which started planning in 2016 and provides settlement services for sterling payments in the UK, worth around £790 billion a day.
[1]
The second re-plan during the winter of 2022-23 was a result of an external "shock" outside the bank's control, the NAO said. "The ECB moved its migration date for the new messaging standard close to the Bank's date, creating too high a level of change for users to manage safely."
[2]
[3]
The ECB was moving to ISO 20022, a global standard for electronic data interchange in finance, which promises a single, rich, structured language for payments, replacing older formats like SWIFT MT. In October 2022, it announced a delay to its ISO migration program, putting it back to June 2023, just four weeks before the planned launch of the RTGS system.
"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," [4]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."
[5]Home Office staff still leaning on 25-year-old asylum case management system
[6]Report blasts UK Ministry of Defence over Afghan data-handling failures
[7]Digital overhaul at UK's NS&I bank is £1.3B over budget and 4 years late
[8]UK tax collector falls short on digital efficiency, watchdog says
The estimated overall cost of the RTGS program is £431 million, 15 percent above what was planned and more than the original 11 percent risk contingency. Still, the costs remained lower than the industry standard for similar projects, the NAO said.
"In our view, the bank could have considered retaining a cost range at this stage or estimating a higher contingency to factor in 'unknown' risks, to better reflect the level of uncertainty."
[9]
However, the auditors added: "The increase in cost was reasonable given the size and complexity of the program, and the number of uncertainties and risks that the bank had to manage."
In 2020, the bank contracted Accenture as its technical delivery partner. The previous RTGS relied on mainframe technology and was difficult to maintain because of its specialist hardware and the shortage of skills. The new platform is still internally hosted, but relies on "cloud-native" technologies, making it more flexible. ®
Get our [10]Tech Resources
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[4] https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/bank-of-englands-real-time-gross-settlement-system-renewal-programme/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/12/uk_asylum_atlas/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/14/pac_mod_afghan_report/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/14/nsandi_nao_report/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/07/uk_tax_collector_falls_short/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aUA-sjnNocGx8l5NdhdBgQAAANM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Doctor Syntax
Don't be silly. By the time Trump's done with the US economy the Fed Res will be messaging them asking for loans.
ParlezVousFranglais
Dear Lord - "The UK central bank's £431 million project to move to a Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system was largely a success"
What on earth are they playing at! Remove those responsible immediately - we can't have UK Public Bodies completing projects "successfully"! And how dare they listen to stakeholders and update their plans accordingly based on feedback from the people who have to actually use their systems.
The reputation of every civil service department & quango could suffer irreparable damage if success starts to become the norm - think of the horror of the Army procuring an armored vehicle that's more dangerous to the enemy than our own soldiers, or of a post office computer system that doesn't randomly result in the prosecutions of our postmasters...
What's next? An efficient HMRC? A well-organized NHS IT system?
The very fabric of British administrative inefficiency is at risk! Thanks to El Reg for uncovering this dire state of affairs - I hope it continues to keep track of these dangerous progressives over the coming months!...
Soon the ECB will be completely shunned and have no one to message.