Several investors and traders took to Twitter to complain about technical glitches faced by them while using the Kotak Neo app on December 5. Users were unable to place orders, or square off positions as the app was down the whole day.
"This must be the first time in Indian Stock Exchange history that a broker was down for the full day. Very bad service", wrote Bijay Kumar Sharma — a chartered accountant-turned-trader.
At 11 am, Kotak Securities took to the micro-blogging site to provide an update. "We're facing issues with the NSE adapter and NSE orders in Kotak Neo currently. The trades in BSE are working fine. The team is actively working on resolving the issue. We regret the inconvenience caused," it said.
However, by the end of the day too, the glitches were not resolved, pointed out users. On placing payout requests, they received a notification stating that the orders would be processed by tomorrow (December 6) evening due to technical issues.
"Neither can you trade using your Kotak account nor can you withdraw funds," wrote another distressed user. Many traders also posted screenshots of the losses incurred as they were not able to square off their positions on time.
In response to Moneycontrol's query, a spokesperson of the Kotak Mahindra Group said, “We assure our clients that we are working on a real-time basis to resolve it at the earliest.”
This is not the first time the broker has faced such a major outage. On May 4, the day when Life Insurance Corporation IPO opened, customers had found it difficult to log in to its page.
Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on November 25 issued a new framework to cut down on instances of technical glitches being faced by stock brokers in India.
The measures including new reporting requirements, financial disincentives for stock brokers facing technical glitches, capacity planning, and software testing among others will become applicable from April 1, 2023.
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