Some Absa Stockbrokers customers have been locked out of their accounts following an upgrade of the platform, causing frustration - as well as concern about the safety of their investments.
Clients took to social media expressing their frustration after access to their accounts were revoked for no reason. Making matters worse was that customers' emails weren't responded to, while some reported that their calls aren't being answered either.
@AbsaSouthAfrica I've been trying for 30 mins to contact absastockbrokers by telephone as my share account has been deactivated. I'm getting very agitated. Can you please help.
— TurtleDove (@TurtleD46282024) June 8, 2021
"I am rather concerned as I do not know whether my investments have been stolen or what is going on," an Absa Stockbrokers account holder told Fin24.
Bongani Mageba, the managing executive of non-banking financial services at Absa Retail and Business Bank, told Fin24 that login problems resulted from the recent upgrade of the Absa Stockbrokers website.
As Absa started migrating clients to the new platform in the past few weeks, some were locked out of their accounts.
"The upgrade is intended to provide clients with an improved online trading experience and better security, but we are aware that some clients have experienced issues following the migration. We would like to apologise to clients for the inconvenience and would like to assure them that the platform is working," said Mageba.
He said Absa was busy taking steps to improve clients' experience, including improving communication to the affected clients and increasing the capacity of its call centre to deal with queries.
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