Investors were yesterday locked out of some of Britain’s largest trading platforms as they rushed to capitalise on Pfizer’s vaccine announcement.
The breakthrough in the fight against Covid-19 triggered a stampede of interest among savers wanting to buy and sell shares or check their portfolios.
But Hargreaves Lansdown and AJ Bell were plagued with technical difficulties as they buckled under overwhelming demand.
Locked out: Hargreaves Lansdown and AJ Bell were plagued with technical difficulties as they buckled under overwhelming demand following Pfizer’s vaccine announcement
Fidelity apologised for ‘intermittent service issues’ while IG admitted that several of its investors were unable to check the value of their investments for around 30 minutes.
It meant some lost thousands because they could not access their accounts or had to endure lengthy waits for trades to go through.
And others were unable to see the value of their investments in real time, leaving them with no idea how much their shares were worth.
Hargreaves Lansdown, which has more than 1.4m customers, said it had been the platform’s ‘busiest day ever’.
But one investor, Bob Smith, lost more than £2,000 because it took the platform over an hour to sell his shares.
Both AJ Bell and Hargreaves insisted that customers who kept trying to log in should have been able to access their accounts.
Spokesmen for the platforms said only some customers were affected and apologised.
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