London Capital Group (LCG), a Flowbank-owned forex and contracts for differences (CFDs) broker, suffered a major IT outage last week that affected its trading platforms, along with back and middle office systems.

Service Outage of an FX/CFDs Broker

"As you may be aware, LCG has this week suffered a major IT outage, which has affected our trading platforms as well as our back and middle office systems," a notice on the LCG website stated. "The result of this is that clients have been unable to access their accounts online, and we have been unable to process deposits and withdrawals."

"Because the outage has impacted our internal systems, we've been unable to communicate with you as we would have hoped to in such a scenario. We apologize sincerely, both for the inconvenience caused by the outage and our inability [to] relay information to you."

The outage lasted about four days last week, from Tuesday until Friday, and affected the operations of the broker's London and Bahamas-based operations.

Now, the LCG trading platforms are "back online," the broker highlighted.

However, all the IT-related issues of the broker are not resolved. Traders can only access their accounts with a new web address and need to reset their passwords. Although MT4 users can log in as normal.

Furthermore, the glitch can be seen on LCG's website as it only loads texts, not images. The brokerage operator did not specify the reasons behind the outage.

Changing Business Models

Previously, LCG was a part of the London Capital Group Holdings, which ran into trouble after delisting from the London Stock Exchange and NEX Exchange in 2018. The same year, Charles Henri Sabet, then heading as the CEO, bought LCG, separating it from the troubled London Capital Group Holdings, which went into liquidation.

Sabet made some structural changes in the ownership of LCG after he launched Switzerland-based FlowBank in 2020.

Recently, the London subsidiary of the LCG has been transitioning from being a spread betting and CFDs provider to becoming an introducing broker. On top of that, it tapped IG Group as the first third-party trading platform provider.