LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Trading returned to normal on Friday after a global technology outage that disrupted operations at financial firms from London to Singapore and New York, although some problems remained, including an outage at some JPMorgan Chase ATMs.
A software update has wreaked havoc on computer systems worldwide, grounding flights, forcing some broadcasters to go off the air and hitting services ranging from banking to health care.
The outage sent shockwaves through financial markets during early Asian and European trading hours, with a number of firms involved in various aspects of the trading process affected.
LSEG, which operates the London Stock Exchange, said its news and data platform, regulatory news service, spot and futures currency rates were affected by an outage caused by a “global third-party technical issue.”
By midday in London, most of these issues appeared to have been resolved. Trading on the London Stock Exchange was unaffected.
A spokesperson for Russell, part of the London Stock Exchange, said they were experiencing an impact on their real-time platforms, “which is preventing clients from accessing and receiving data” and affecting their indices.
The European Energy Exchange said in a statement on its website that customers using the energy and gas trading platform Traiport were experiencing trading issues “due to infrastructure issues with a third-party service provider.”
At least six trading sources at oil majors Shell and BP as well as trading house Vitol said operations were affected. BP and Shell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Vitol said core trading operations were working well although some individual computers and some processes that interact with third-party systems were temporarily affected.
“Friday’s global technology outage is an example of an unexpected event that market participants always fear, but don’t think about much,” said Glenn Smith, chief investment officer at GDS Wealth Management.
As business begins to return to the United States, things are starting to get back to normal.
The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq said markets were operating normally.
Major U.S. banks, including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, said they had not seen any significant impact on their systems or operations. Citigroup was also unaffected, a person familiar with the matter said.
“The vast majority of our ATMs are operating normally and we are working to restore service to the remaining ATMs as quickly as possible,” JPMorgan Chase said. The bank has 16,000 ATMs across the United States and 4,800 branches.
Barriers to accessing systems
While there were no confirmed reports of trading difficulties as a result of the outage, some traders had earlier said there were signs of disruption at smaller financial institutions.
A London-based trader said several multilateral trading facilities were affected, leaving some clients unable to trade.
Some banks and financial services companies said employees and customers had problems accessing their systems.
“People are unable to operate their devices after rebooting them. Those who did not reboot their devices are fine,” said another trader.
Schwab posted on its website: “Due to a global industry-wide issue, some online functions may be intermittently slow or unavailable. We are actively monitoring the issue. Phone services may be disrupted and wait times may be longer than usual.”
Schwab did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Barclays said customers were unable to manage their accounts on its digital investment platform Smart Investor. Germany’s Allianz said the outage affected staff’s ability to log into their computers. Banks in South Africa also reported disruptions.
A spokesperson for the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (FS-ISAC) said the outages did not have a systematic impact on the financial services sector.
“Core functions, including banking and payment processing, are largely operating with some isolated impacts,” the spokesperson added.
Fitch said the latest event is likely to lead to increased regulatory scrutiny of IT service providers.
“Financial institutions have increasingly relied on third parties in recent years as part of the ongoing digitization of the sector,” said Mansoor Hussain, Head of Financial Institutions Research at Fitch.
“Economies of scale are compelling, but they can also bring systemic risks.”
