Following on from this morning’s story about the New Zealand overdraft fiasco, a few further cases of Information Quality trainwrecks in Financial services have come to our attention.

This first one is from 2001 and was found on the BBC.co.uk website, with further reporting from The Telegraph

Bank bungles pesetas/euros

Back in 2001, David Hickey was emigrating from Ireland to Spain. He asked his bank to change IR£1500 into pesetas, but an error in the bank meant that the  amount transferred was in euros, not pesetas. IR£1500 was approximately 300,000 pesetas. Mr Hickey received EUR300,000 into his account.

The bank eventually had to take legal action in Spain to freeze Mr Hickey’s accounts with a view to getting the money back.

At the time, the bank declined to comment further to the media on the matter and the Irish police were of the view that no criminal offence had taken place because of the ‘technical error’ (i.e. IQTrainwreck) involved.

Other Trainwrecks

We’re researching the other IQTrainwrecks that came to light this morning on this theme, not least to make sure we haven’t covered them here already. Expect further updates in the coming days.