Cetera computer outage puts brokers out of commission

Cetera Financial Group and its 9,000 financial advisers experienced a technology meltdown on Sunday night when its systems crashed, leaving brokers with limited access to serving client accounts and managing client money for the better part of Monday and Tuesday. “For two days, the system has been down,” said one Cetera adviser, who asked not to be named. “We can't manage portfolios, block trades or get into client accounts.” During a conference call on Tuesday afternoon, Cetera management told advisers that a hardware system glitch had occurred over the weekend and it was necessary to shut the whole system down, the adviser said. A Cetera source familiar with the situation said that advisers have been able to trade on an uninterrupted basis through alternative means but gave no further details. A spokesman for Cetera Financial Group, Joseph Kuo, said that the company has “completely resolved the issue, which we moved immediately to address as soon as it was identified. We are actively reviewing existing platforms and resources to prevent any recurrence of this issue.” The Cetera Financial Group technology crash was first reported late Tuesday by AdvisorHub, an industry website. It's common for large brokerage firms to experience technology problems when integrating systems. Morgan Stanley and LPL Financial have experienced such problems in the past. Cetera Financial Group has seven separate broker-dealers, and the network's new CEO, Robert Moore, has stressed improvements in technology as a necessary part of moving the firm forward after it emerged from bankruptcy earlier this year. On the call with advisers on Tuesday, management said that they had expected to correct the problem by noon Monday wasn't able to do so, the adviser said. On Tuesday, the firm discovered it was a hardware problem, he said. “So they had to shut the entire system down and reboot it,” the adviser said Tuesday evening. “Let's see what happens tomorrow.”