Interactive Brokers says expects ‘prompt recovery’ from outage

(Reuters) – Retail brokerage Interactive Brokers Group Inc said on Monday it experienced “a significant failure” in a data storage system that left its users unable to use its trading platform, but that it expects a “prompt recovery.”

The outage was the latest in a string of glitches among retail brokerages in the past year as trading volumes have surged on the back of rising markets after a sharp downturn at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We recognize the dislocation this has caused to our clients, and express our apologies,” Interactive Brokers said in a statement.

The brokerage said it had asked the vendor of the system that went down for analysis and recovery and that independently, it was rerouting to its backup recovery centers.

“Based on the current situation, we expect a prompt recovery, and will of course, keep interested parties informed in a timely manner.”

Shares of the company were down 2% at $53.96 in early trading.

(Reporting by John McCrank in New York and Thyagaraju Adinarayan in London; Editing by Saikat Chatterjee and Nick Macfie)