Hargreaves Lansdown and AJ Bell — two of the UK’s biggest retail investment businesses — have moved to reassure investors after a surge in trading volumes caused intermittent outages across their platforms.

Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK’s largest share brokerage outfit with £107bn in assets and more than 1 million clients, apologised to thousands of customers who were unable to place trades on 9 November after markets were sent into overdrive following news of Covid vaccine breakthrough.