Hargreaves Lansdown IT glitch locks out millions as markets plunge

Thousands of Hargreaves Lansdown customers have been experiencing an outage since Thursday evening, March 19.

The outage is due to a major IT failure that struck Britain’s largest retail investment platform during a period of extreme market volatility.

The Bristol-based company, which manages more than £170 billion for around two million clients, confirmed Friday, March 20, that technical issues were affecting its website and mobile app.

While there’s no issue with customer data and assets, the company made clear that there’s “no evidence of any cyber incident or data breach.”

Following the outage, investors heavily criticised the platform as they were unable to trade amid volatile markets triggered by escalating conflict in the Middle East.

Consumer lawyer Gary Rycroft said affected customers may have legal claims in negligence, but financial loss would be challenging if markets recover.

The outage comes after weeks of upheaval for the investment platform, which introduced new fees applicable to new customers on March 1, triggering a wave of transfer requests to rival firms.

The officials have apologised for the inconvenience and pledged to restore full service as soon as possible, and requested users to check the website for more updates.