Charles Schwab’s client portals suffer system-wide outage

Charles Schwab & Co.’s system-wide client platforms, including its trading system StreetSmart Edge and robo-adviser Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, were not available to customers for more than an hour this morning as the firm experienced technical difficulties.

The brokerage did not make any announcement about its outage at the time it was occurring, except to respond via Twitter to concerned customers who tweeted that they could not log in to their accounts. Schwab responded with a hotline number for urgent trading matters, though customers complained on Twitter that there was a long wait time or they couldn’t get anyone on the phone at all.

The problem had been resolved in time for the market opening.

Schwab sites experienced issues this morning but are now back online. Clients should be able to log in as normal.

— Charles Schwab Corp (@CharlesSchwab) August 28, 2015

Greg Gable, a Schwab spokesman, would not specify what the issue was, only saying that the company was “experiencing technical difficulties online this morning due to internal technical issues.”

He added that the problem was unrelated to volume or any other external factors.

Many customers flocked to Twitter to complain or simply to find out what was happening.

. @CharlesSchwab 10.4k tweets and 11 twitter accounts. Not one of of them give a status of the outage.#schwab down pic.twitter.com/Z19v7ziqHy

— Bilo Selhi (@StocksThatDoubl) August 28, 2015

What good is @CharlesSchwab if a person can’t log in?

— Dr. Gene Lingerfelt (@GeneLingerfelt) August 28, 2015

@CharlesSchwab maybe an email to tell people your site is down nation wide does chuck know you guys are failing everyone with your silence

— Steve Dreifuss (@foos1234) August 28, 2015

@CharlesSchwab Your web site is down again. Any updates? #schwab

— Steve Copertino (@scopertino) August 28, 2015

@SchwabService Schwab Alliance and Institutional websites both down – any ETA on uptime?

— Laurence Grosbaum (@flyingtaco63) August 28, 2015

@CharlesSchwab @PavanPiratla For URGENT matters? Really? 20 minute wait to get to anyone……

— Freddie Miles (@thetwitabides) August 28, 2015

Did Schwab just get hacked or will they tell us their software upgrade didn’t go so well? cc @1DannyStewart @DanCofall

— Timothy Reazor (@TJReazor) August 28, 2015

Tough morning to be a trader if you have a @CharlesSchwab account, and on weekly OpEx! #stocks #options #trading #investing

— Jason Brooks (@jasonbrooks242) August 28, 2015

doh! Can’t login to @CharlesSchwab . The system is "temporarily" unavailable. http://t.co/rJPKZtAt2l down as well.

— Joshua Lehrer (@jsl_13) August 28, 2015

@CharlesSchwab please let your customers know what is going on with http://t.co/ZOZtF3gAai

— Jennifer Mathews (@jmathews333) August 28, 2015

Bill Singer, a New York-based attorney focused on the financial-services industry, said that there could have been major consequences to Schwab’s online glitch, especially since the company did not notify its customers via email or immediately post an alert about the issue on its website.

Mr. Gable said that there was an urgent notification on its website, though an InvestmentNews reporter did not see any notification of the “technical difficulties” before the issue had been resolved.

“If the firm has been hacked then they have a better defense because they were victimized by a crime,” Mr. Singer said. “But if it was software failure … they could be facing serious liability.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission declined to comment, while the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. did not respond by press time.

Mr. Singer noted that a similar occurrence happened in April 2013, when the company’s website was experiencing intermittent access problems following a cyberattack. No client data or accounts were compromised.

Firms’ account logins have been under fire recently. One whistleblower said Vanguard Group’s account sign in credentials were insecure, and others have cited Schwab with the same issues.