The London Stock Exchange (LSE) has launched a new Live Service Portal, intended to help improve communications with its members.
Previously, if an incident were to occur across any of the LSE Group's markets, such as a trading venue outage, a notice would have been posted on the firm's corporate website. This service however, was not designed to disseminate information relating to live service issues.
The exchange group has launched a dedicated, hosted live service portal that provides a holistic view of three markets – the London Stock Exchange; EDX, its derivatives market; and pan-European equities market Turquoise. Other markets are expected to be added in the coming weeks.
Using the new service, LSE Group members will be able to register to receive automated notifications about service incidents via SMS or email. The portal will also be made available for use with mobile phones.
The revamp of the LSE's live service communications service closely follows guidance from UK regulator the Financial Services Authority on how trading venues should inform their members and the wider market should an issue arise.
The LSE's last outage occurred on its UK market on 26 November 2009, when the exchange was forced to suspend all order-driven executions for three-and-a-half-hours following connectivity issues. During the outage the LSE placed its market into auction mode after consulting with its members, a move that was widely criticised by competing trading venues including multilateral trading facility Chi-X Europe.