Thousands of Hargreaves Lansdown customers have been experiencing a power outage since Thursday night, March 19.
The outage is due to a major IT failure that affected Britain’s largest retail investment platform during a period of extreme market volatility.
The Bristol-based company, which manages more than £170bn for around two million clients, confirmed on Friday 20 March that technical issues were affecting its website and mobile app.
While there is no problem with customer data and assets, the company made it clear that “there is no evidence of any cyber incident or data breach.”
Following the outage, investors heavily criticized the platform because they were unable to trade amid volatile markets caused by the escalating conflict in the Middle East.
Consumer lawyer Gary Rycroft said affected clients may have legal claims for negligence, but financial losses would be a challenge if markets recover.
The disruption comes after weeks of turmoil for the investment platform, which introduced new fees applicable to new clients on March 1, prompting a wave of transfer requests to rival firms.
Officials apologized for the inconvenience and promised to restore full service as soon as possible, asking users to check the website for further updates.
