Trading in the forex market was impacted on Friday as one of the platforms suffered an outage.
Photograph: Dado Ruvic/Reuters
One of the electronic trading platforms suffered an outage around midday during the trading hours due to which players were unable to log into the system, according to sources.
Orders dried up as a result of this, they said, adding that this created a heightened uncertainty in the forex market, causing excess volatility in the Indian rupee, which was avoidable.
According to market participants, the Rupee, which has been range-bound around 83.30 to the dollar for many weeks lost some ground as a result of the volatility, depreciating till 83.50 intra-day before closing at 83.34 at the end of the trading session.
A source said the Reserve Bank of India has asked the platform to undertake a “root cause analysis” and “ascertain whether it was a system failure or human error that led to the disruption” on the platform.
The RBI has also sought an explanation from the platform to understand the circumstances leading up to the disruption and if the standard operating procedures on business continuity were triggered immediately or not.
