It is 11:20 on a Thursday, the index is down 1.4%, and the app will not load. The website times out. The call-and-trade number rings and is engaged. You are carrying a position that needs a decision, and the route through which you would ordinarily make it does not exist for the next forty minutes. This is not insolvency and your money is not at risk in the way that word implies. It is far more common than a broker failure, and it is far more time-sensitive.
The electronic reader at the toll plaza stops working and the queue builds. The plaza does not close. A staff member opens a manual lane, and that lane exists to clear the vehicles that are already stuck — not to let new traffic in faster. It is a way out of the jam, not a way around the toll.
The contingency arrangements around a broker outage are that manual lane. They exist to clear what is already stuck rather than to let new traffic in — you can close a position through them, not open one. The part worth knowing before the day you need it: the lane is opened and staffed by the exchange and your broker, so reaching the broker is the step everything else depends on.
How common this actually is
Broker insolvency is rare and slow. Technical disruption is neither. Order management systems fail, exchange connectivity drops, a data centre link goes down, an authentication provider stops responding, a release goes out badly on a heavy volume day. Most last minutes rather than hours, and most cause no harm at all — because most people have nothing open that needs attention in that window. The problem is entirely concentrated in the minority of days when you do.
- Lasts minutes to hours; systems come back the same day or the next
- Your holdings and funds are unaffected and legally untouched
- The risk is entirely about open positions you cannot act on
- The remedy is needed within minutes, so it has to be known in advance
- A solvency or misuse event, resolved over months
- Shares sit in your own demat with the depository, not the broker
- The Investor Protection Fund and the exchange arbitration route apply
- The remedy is procedural and there is time to work through it
What exists now, and what was withdrawn
SEBI has built several layers around this since 2022: business continuity and disaster recovery obligations on brokers, a cyber resilience framework, a technical glitch framework that requires outages to be reported and penalised, and exchange-level facilities for squaring off positions when a broker's own systems fail. The precise form of the investor-facing part has been revised more than once, so confirm what your broker currently offers rather than relying on a description you read somewhere — including this one. What has held steady is the obligation on the broker to have a working fallback, and your ability to hold them to it afterwards.
The exchanges also run contingency terminals: dedicated connections to the trading system through which a broker whose own platform has failed can still square off clients' positions. The exchange provides them; the broker operates them. SEBI has revised these arrangements more than once since 2023, and whether any investor-facing login exists at a given time has changed with them — so treat the current position as something to confirm with your broker rather than as settled knowledge. What has not changed is the shape of the problem: on the day it happens, almost every route runs through reaching your broker, which is why the rest of this lesson is about preparation rather than about a button to press.
| Route | Who operates it | What it can do |
|---|---|---|
| The broker's other channel | You | The web terminal when the app is down, or the reverse. Most outages take out one channel rather than all of them |
| Call and trade | The broker's dealer desk | Places and cancels orders on your instruction. The fastest route on the days it answers |
| Contingency Pool Trading | The broker, on exchange terminals | Squares off clients' open positions. Risk reduction only — it cannot open a new one |
| A second funded account | You | Cannot touch a position held elsewhere, but can hedge the exposure. The only route that adds rather than reduces |
Reaching someone, on a day you are already flustered
- 1Confirm it is the broker and not you
Try mobile data instead of wifi. Then check whether the broker has posted a status notice. Thirty seconds of this saves you from reporting an outage that is your own connection.
- 2Try the other channel before you try the phone
Most outages take down one channel. If the app is dead, open the web terminal; if the web terminal is dead, open the app. This costs almost nothing and resolves a fair share of incidents without anyone else being involved.
- 3Call and trade
Almost every broker runs a dealer desk that can place and cancel orders on your instruction, and the number is on your contract note and the broker's website. It is the fastest route when it answers and the slowest when a thousand other clients have had the same idea at the same moment. Store the number before you need it.
- 4Ask specifically for a square-off through the exchange contingency terminals
If the desk answers and tells you their systems are down, this is the thing to ask for by name. The facility exists for exactly this situation and it is the broker who invokes it. A client who names it tends to get further than one who asks whether anything can be done.
- 5Record everything, then stop
Timestamps, screenshots, order numbers, when you called and what you were told. Then stop, rather than spending the window trying to reconstruct a strategy you cannot open new legs for.
Twenty minutes into an outage
You hold two lots of an index option bought this morning, now down 30%, and a limit order resting to buy more at a lower price. The app has been unresponsive for twenty minutes. Expiry is tomorrow.
- Keep your registered mobile and email current with the broker. Every remaining route identifies you by what is on file — the dealer desk, the grievance cell, and any claim that follows.
- Store the call-and-trade number and your client code offline. Both are on your contract note. Looking them up requires the website that is currently down.
- Know the SCORES route and the exchange investor grievance cell. SEBI's complaint system is where an outage that cost you money is documented — not the broker's support chat.
- Record what happened while it happens. Timestamps, screenshots, the order numbers involved. Any later claim rests entirely on evidence you can only gather in the moment.
- A second funded account is preparation, not paranoia. It cannot square off a position held elsewhere, but it lets you hedge the exposure — the one thing no contingency facility will do for you.
- Size positions so that an hour of no access is survivable. This is the only remedy that works before the event rather than during it, and it is the one that costs nothing.
Your broker's platform is down and you have an open futures position plus an unexecuted limit order. What route is actually available to you?
Building ki lift beech mein ruk gayi. Us waqt guard ka number dhoondhne se kuch nahi hota — woh pehle se phone mein hona chahiye tha. App na chale toh raasta broker ke dealer desk se hi jaata hai, aur woh number contract note pe likha hota hai. Aaj nikaal ke save kar lo; us din sabko wahi soojhega.
- A technical outage is common, short and urgent; a broker failure is rare, slow and procedural.
- Check your broker's published outage procedure once, in writing, before you need it.
- Exchange contingency terminals let the broker square off positions when its own systems are down.
- A reportable glitch is five minutes or more of disruption in trading hours, with a root cause analysis due.
- No route opens a new position, so sizing and a second account are the only remedies that work in advance.
Mark it done to track your progress through the curriculum.
Common questions
Short, direct answers to what people ask about this topic.
- what to do if my broker app is down and I have an open position
- Work through whatever broker channel is still answering, in this order: confirm it is not your own connection, try the other terminal (web if the app is dead, app if the web is dead), then call the dealer desk on the call-and-trade number. If the desk says their systems are down, ask by name for a square-off through the exchange contingency terminals — the facility exists for exactly this and it is the broker who invokes it. Cancelling any resting unexecuted order first costs nothing and stops an exposure you cannot manage from growing.
- during a broker outage the exchange contingency route can only be used to
- Square off existing positions — it is a risk-reduction facility and cannot open a new one. That design principle is the single most useful thing to know in advance: contingency arrangements get you out, they do not get you in. If your protection against a move is a hedge you have not yet placed, no contingency route will place it, and the only remaining action is reducing the exposure you already hold.
- what counts as a technical glitch for a stockbroker under sebi rules
- A malfunction lasting five minutes or more during trading hours that affects login, order processing, visibility of funds, or risk management systems. The broker must report it to the exchange within two hours, file a preliminary report the next trading day and submit a root cause analysis within fourteen working days. That means an official timeline of the event will exist — your own timestamps and screenshots are what let you check your account against it.
- where do I complain if a broker outage cost me money
- SEBI’s SCORES complaint system and the investor grievance cell of the exchange your broker is a member of — not the broker’s support chat, which leaves no record you can rely on later. Any claim rests almost entirely on evidence gathered while it is happening: timestamps, screenshots, the order numbers involved, when you called and what you were told. Keep your registered mobile and email current with the broker, because every one of those routes identifies you by what is on file.
- how quickly must an exchange recover after an outage
- SEBI’s business continuity framework for market infrastructure institutions sets a recovery time objective of 45 minutes, with a requirement to shift operations to the disaster recovery site. The reference case is 24 February 2021, when the NSE halted cash and derivatives trading from late morning after a failure in its telecom links and reopened only in a specially extended afternoon session. When the exchange itself is halted, no broker-level contingency route helps — nothing trades for anybody until the session resumes.