Project Excalibur

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This project inception was the result of FCA's review into failings in the way some banks sold interest rate hedging products. A number of banks, including HSBC were ordered to hold reviews of these transactions and to redress where necessary. With the guidance and oversight of a third party - Deloitte in HSBC's case - these structured reviews were subjected to rigorous testing and scrutiny. In some cases certain reviews went back and forth between the bank and the independent reviewer - or "Skilled Persons" as they were known.

I joined this project in January 2003 heading a small team with the assignment of providing comprehensive MI reports to the hierarchy on a weekly basis. The initial contract was drawn up to cover three months, but eventually spanned out over a period of just over three years.

Due to strict timelines much of the project was reactive and my ability to employ any type of robust reporting tool or database to draw from, was non-existent. I had been initially informed that each of the teams assigned to the various stages of review and redress would be using Excel workbooks to record progress and that I was limited to that. I subsequently had a meeting with the project heads and informed them that at the very least Microsoft Access should be utilised to draw the information together and combine it to produce meaningful reporting.

They agreed but stipulated code should not be used. I pushed back and said without this extensibility I could not guarantee anything and would be reluctant to proceed. They again agreed.

The next month or so was furious RAD cycles that culminated in a very decent working model that connected periodically to all workbooks and made sense of the numbers. Team members helped me fire-fight all the expected human errors and issues that were invariably encountered during the course of the project. Despite teams not always adhering to certain ground rules I had laid out, reporting was always reconciled and delivered on time.

The final few weeks of the project led to the production of the Camlann database that laid out the final numbers (the database was coined Camlann to denote Arthur's final battle and reflected the name of the project - Excalibur)