The Lemon Fool

Interactive Investor seems to be taken down quite a lot for maintenance (it’s down as I write). I don’t mind this, I’d rather companies invest in their systems. But the frequency is unnerving me. It’s a drastic thing for an online business to close down so you’d only want to do it rarely. We’re so reliant on gold standard IT these days, especially in financial services (and in cars!) and it’s easy to lose confidence.

At the back of my mind I am imaging that they are fire fighting with horrendously outdated IT. But they could just be making incremental improvements. Who knows. I am inclined to think the worse.

Any thoughts?

I'd worry a lot more if the system is down when the market is open. A Saturday less so. I have no idea how up-to-date or not Interactive Investor's systems are but abrdn bought it not long ago and I wouldn't be surprised if post acquisition they have done a thorough technology review and need to bring the system up to their internal technology architecture standards as well as wanting to improve functionality and meet ongoing regulatory requirements. I use another platform which regularly goes down at the weekend. Fortunately they are consistent with when the system is unavailable and I plan around that.

Pendrainllwyn

AndrewInDevon wrote:Interactive Investor seems to be taken down quite a lot for maintenance (it’s down as I write). I don’t mind this, I’d rather companies invest in their systems. But the frequency is unnerving me. It’s a drastic thing for an online business to close down so you’d only want to do it rarely. We’re so reliant on gold standard IT these days, especially in financial services (and in cars!) and it’s easy to lose confidence.

At the back of my mind I am imaging that they are fire fighting with horrendously outdated IT. But they could just be making incremental improvements. Who knows. I am inclined to think the worse.

Any thoughts?

There was a time, maybe a year or so ago when it was down pretty much every weekend and sometimes from Saturday morning until Sunday evening. It seems now to be less frequent and for shorter duration. This morning it was for just a few hours. I don't know how this compares with other platforms but if it remains at a few hours shutdown needed every other weekend that seems like a reasonable maintenance routine.

Absolutely nothing to worry about would be my response. The II website and the app have improved hugely from where they were. The app especially. I now use the app most of the time now. I would much prefer maintenance is done over the weekend than at any other time. And at least they do warn you ahead of time.

BullDog wrote:Absolutely nothing to worry about would be my response. The II website and the app have improved hugely from where they were.

Beh, the app maybe but Lemons preferred the website as inherited from TD. Poll: viewtopic.php?p=563307#p563307

And then there's this mega whinge thread. ... viewtopic.php?p=559100#p559100

As I have just posted, in the mega whinge thread, they've finally fixed what I saw as the worst change of the ones they introduced in January. So I'm happy for the downtime for a user interface change, today.

AndrewInDevon wrote:Interactive Investor seems to be taken down quite a lot for maintenance ... it’s easy to lose confidence.

Weekend.... as said, their new website is a POS compared to the previous iteration, but... they still allow me to buy without funds, and credit my divis quickly and without error, and I can trade most of the stuff I want to.

From what I read on here none of the platforms is exactly perfect, especially the cheapies such as II.

V8

No reason for them to have planned downtime.


In the company I work in, the website runs 24/7 and there's no planned downtime. It's always expected to be up.

All our deploys have deployment slots, rollbacks as an option, duplicated environments so we can switch if we need to.

I just don't understand how II can be so... "backwards" with their infrastructure.

I see ii being similar/same as FCIT, re-domiciled into the UK/EU for milking purposes. Tendency towards higher fees and other less opaque costs (such as high FX costs). FCIT's former Montreal base is renowned for its conservatism/service (Bank of Montreal (BMON)).

Our intent is to move General/ISA's over to Interactive Broker. $500K ($250K) protections (rather than £85K) lower costs in reflection of competing with other US (generally lower cost) brokerages.

Prior put-off was IBKR's 'awkward' interface, in being so flexible/expansive. With the introduction of ISA support however and apparently there are interface options that are simple/straightforward - which basically is all we need.