Digital overhaul at UK's NS&I bank is £1.3B over budget and 4 years late

Updated The UK's state-owned savings bank has blown past its budget by £1.3 billion on a digital transformation program beset by delays, according to the National Audit Office.

National Savings & Investments (NS&I), which brings in government funding through the retail savings market, has pushed the project back by four years after running into procurement snags and technical complexity, the public spending watchdog's report said.

In 2020, NS&I began a business transformation program called Project Rainbow which aimed to reduce the bank's running costs, make NS&I a self-service digital business, and replace its 20-year outsourcing deal with Atos by splitting the work into five separate contracts.

In 2014, the bank, which handles £240 billion in customer investments, awarded Atos a new contract to run until 2021, and then extended it until 2024 and again until 2028 without competition, handing the French outsourcer another £474.4 million ...