Shoonya settles claims of Rs 3 cr with glitch-hit traders, plays down account closures

Sarvjeet Virk, Co-founder & MD, Finvasia, said the glitch was faced only by those traders who took at least one trade during the first 15 minutes of trade.

Shoonya, the discount broker that faced a massive glitch last month, driving several traders into the red, told Moneycontrol that the it has compensated about Rs 3 crore worth of claims.

“From our last analysis as of April 27, we have received just below 700 disputes about the said incident, of which 12 percent were duplicates,” Shoonya and its holding company Finvasia said. Only 77.5 percent of the remaining disputes were eligible for compensation and around 77 percent of that has been resolved, they said.

“We continue to engage with distressed customers and resolve their concerns. From the disputes that we have analysed and resolved till April 27, we have covered losses of our customers in the range of Rs 2.7-3 crore.”

Traders using Shoonya broker accounts complained of a glitch in the system on April 13. They said the broker was passing ghost orders in large quantities and their accounts were showing huge losses.

However, most of those losses were due to front-end glitches, said several traders. But others reiterated that they lost real money due the glitch. Those traders have been running around since then for compensation. Some of them confirmed to Moneycontrol that Shonya has compensated 80-90 percent of their claims.

Sarvjeet Virk, Co-founder and MD of Finvasia, said the glitch was faced only by those traders who took at least one trade during the first 15 minutes of trade. Others did not face any problems since the backend was working just fine.

Also read: Shoonya glitch a wake-up call for bourses, Sebi on perils of rampant options trading

“The selective clients who were trading in the initial few minutes of the market, they were the one whose frontend was disturbed because of which they were not able to see their actual active positions,” said Virk. “And as I said, the frontend was the problem, the backend was working fine. The trade execution was going to the exchange successfully.”

The top management of the broker claimed that the glitch has not resulted in much customer losses for it even as some traders told Moneycontrol that they have since migrated to other brokers. Though others believe that the approach that the broker took after the glitch was satisfactory.

Roshan Shajan, an algo trader who also suffered due to the glitch but fortunately did not lose any money, said he has migrated to Zerodha now. “It is true I did not lose any money but now I am not using Shoonya,” he said.

On the other hand, Gowri Shankar, another derivatives trader, said he is continuing with his account with Shoonya. “They accepted their mistake and they have compensated for the losses as well. I am still trading with Shoonya,” he pointed out.

The company, however, shrugged off the exits. “[The number of account closure is] insignificant. The number of requests that we have got for account closure are maybe less than 25 percent to 30 percent of the daily registrations that we are getting,” said Tajinder Virk, Co-founder and CEO of Finvasia Group.