[ITmedia News] “Incorrect loss cut” in SBI Securities FX. Subcontractor IIJ made a work error and the system could not detect it, affecting 779 accounts.

SBI Securities announced on October 14th that a system failure occurred in its FX stock security service, and stop-loss cuts (forced liquidations) that should not have been made were executed on 779 accounts from the 12th to early morning of the 13th.

The cause was a mistake made by an operator at subcontractor Internet Initiative (IIJ), and a system design that made it impossible to detect the mistake. SBI Securities basically responds by confirming the user's intentions and returning the position to the state it would have been in if there had been no failure.

The collateral stock was not reflected and was incorrectly judged as “insufficient deposit” → Loss cut

FX is a transaction that allows you to buy and sell foreign currencies for an amount several times the deposited security deposit. When the margin decreases to a certain level due to losses, the securities company automatically closes unsettled trades (positions) (loss cut) to prevent further losses.

The ``Stock Certificate Pledge Service'' allows stocks held in a securities account to be used as security deposits instead of cash, but this time a problem occurred where the valuation (substitute valuation) of the collateral stock was not reflected. As a result, the security deposit was calculated to be lower than the actual amount, and even accounts that were not originally eligible for a loss cut were incorrectly determined to have insufficient security deposit and were subject to a loss cut.

Files that arrived late were not reprocessed and the assessed value was not reflected.

The outage lasted from the start of trading on the 12th (Monday/holiday) until 5:30 a.m. on the 13th, when SBI Securities completed temporary maintenance.

The trigger was a work error by IIJ's operations staff. SBI Securities outsources the operation of its FX system to SBI Liquidity Market, which in turn subcontracts some of the management operations to IIJ.

In the early hours of October 10th (Saturday), a file containing information on collateral stocks (substitute securities information file) arrived later than expected, so we had to redo the import process. The file arrived by 1:25 a.m. and could have been imported if it had been reprocessed using the correct procedure.

However, the person in charge at IIJ misunderstood it as a different process and did not reprocess it, and the two files, the proxy securities information and stock price closing price information, were not imported, resulting in the proxy valuation value not being reflected.

At 3:19 a.m. on the same day, the person in charge re-executed the subsequent process without these two files being imported. The system proceeded to the next process without checking to see if all the necessary files were present, so even if there was an error, the process would not stop.

In principle, the amount of erroneous loss cut can be restored to prevent recurrence.

SBI Securities conducted temporary maintenance from 4:00 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. on the 13th and returned the substitute valuation to the correct value. Additionally, for accounts that were erroneously determined to require additional security deposits due to the outage, forced settlement based on the determination made at 2:00 a.m. on the 13th was suspended.

For accounts where an erroneous stop-loss cut has occurred, after confirming the user's intentions, we will basically restore the position to the state it would have been in if there had been no failure.

For 407 accounts that have not received any trading, deposit/withdrawal, or transfer instructions after stop-loss cutting, their positions have been restored through temporary maintenance. If you do not wish for restoration, we will accept your request.

The 372 accounts that have been used for transactions will not be restored uniformly, as it may affect future transactions, but will be dealt with individually after confirming the user's wishes. The same goes for users who made their own payments to avoid forced payments.

Those affected were informed on the 13th in an "Important Notice" that was displayed after logging in. The failure was not due to unauthorized access from outside, and no personal or asset information was leaked. SBI Securities said that ``the impact on business results will be minor.''

As a measure to prevent recurrence, SBI Securities will request subcontractors to review their confirmation/re-execution procedures and comply with the procedures, and SBI Securities will confirm the implementation status. We will also review the management system of subcontractors and strengthen supervision.