Two Trading Platform failed at JPMorgan Chase & Co when the financial markets were in chaos last week, Bloomberg reported Monday.
The US bank said Thursday overnight that it was finally back up after an outage rendered its wealth-management clients unable to trade during a massive stock sell-off. But issues cropped up again with its institutional stock-trading platform, which also experienced a "system-wide outage" during the same day.
On Thursday, as global markets rebounded and then sank again, JPMorgan's two systems went offline, leaving many customers to watch their portfolios drop in value without being able to do anything. But on Friday, trading appeared to be back up and running smoothly.
Service at the group's Morcom platform, which serves high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, was only restored after regular market hours, as JPMorgan struggled to keep it online since mid-afternoon.
"Most of yesterday's trades went through, and we're working with clients to rectify any individual instances where trades were delayed," said a JPMorgan spokeswoman on Friday.
In its internal memo, JPMorgan said it would reach out to customers affected by the outage, and work with them on a case-by-case to consider any potential compensation.
According to another note the bank sent to clients, the outage was caused by a surge in volume spurred by investors spooked by the news of the coronavirus and oil trade wars.
A further possible cause of the JPMorgan issue was instability in a part of their infrastructure that was put in place to help systems accommodate high volume. This had resulted in "prolonged delay in providing clients with order status and Execution updates," the US bank said.
During the market turbulence, other platforms that cater to retail investors have also experienced difficulties, resulting in clients getting kept out of the market during sensitive times. Robinhood, Fidelity, TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab, experienced trading downtime amid heavy trading volumes, before managing to restore its systems.
