Bad Timing for a Refinitiv Outage?
Posted by Colin Lambert. Last updated: April 9, 2021
Refinitiv, now owned by the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) suffered a five-hour outage on Thursday. According to market sources the problem started around 8.30 UK time and they have been told by the company it was a problem with authenticating users at sign in.
One source says the firm is rolling out a two-factor authentication system to allow a single sign on across Refinitiv products and that the problem was there. The outage did not apparently impact all customers of the firm, a significant proportion have yet to move to the new sign on process. In what can only be described as a “you couldn’t make it up” moment, one source says to report a problem with the service, they had to log in using the new system, which of course they couldn’t do.
The Full FX understands that trading on the firm’s FX platforms for those not on the new log in system was unaffected, however there were issues with confirmations and other post-trade services on FXall, such as allocations.
The outage comes at a tricky time for LSEG’s Refinitiv, only weeks after the acquisition was completed, LSEG revealed it would have to spend more than predicted on integrating the firm. Sources within Refinitiv talk of a lack of clarity over the direction of the firm beyond the usual broad statements of support and intent to build a “world-class business”.
There is also the question of the changing face of the market data picture. Already far behind Bloomberg in terms of terminals on desks, as discussed in the most recent Full FX podcast, Currency Matters, new, larger, challengers are on the horizon as market data consumption habits change.
Beyond initial annoyance, however, history suggests that the odd glitch rarely sees customers change course. Bloomberg suffered a six-hour outage in 2015 and several trading platforms in the FX space have suffered outages at different times, few of which have had a sustained impact on activity levels.
LSEG, just three months after completing its £27 billion takeover of Refinitiv will, for one, be hoping so.