TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. (AMTD) Chief Operating Officer David Kelley said three recent technology problems at the online brokerage were "completely unrelated" events.

In an interview with Dow Jones Newswires Wednesday, Kelley, who is also head of technology for TD Ameritrade, said the company "has to take some responsibility" for website, server, and streaming-quote issues that affected brokerage clients on three separate days over the past three weeks.

"I don't want to push [these problems] off on other people...these events almost never happen, but in the end it's our problem," he said.

Kelley said the Omaha, Neb., company's policy is to "make clients whole for whatever inconvenience they encountered" on days when they experienced a service disruption.

Ameritrade has offered to compensate some investors financially for monetary losses during the technology issues, while offering others free trades on a "case-by-case" basis.

On Monday, Kelley acknowledged that a "very isolated" number of clients who use TD Ameritrade's website were affected by a problem with one of the carriers in its network that connects to various Internet service providers, or ISPs, throughout the country. The company has declined to name the vendor, citing its own internal policy.

Kelley said that problem is the reason why customers who use specific ISPs would have service in one area of the country, while some who use the same ISP were experiencing difficulties in others.

Kelley acknowledged that TD Ameritrade "still has some issues" with that carrier, but is working with another vendor to "completely solve the problem."

Tuesday, a "more broad-based issue" affected customers' ability to view streaming stock quotes before the stock market closed at 4 p.m. EDT. Kelley said the switch on one of TD Ameritrade's main providers failed and was followed by a similar failure on the company's end.

Kelley said the online brokerage was "in close contact with our quote provider all night working on bringing both switches back up."

The site issue on May 20 related to the failure of one of TD Ameritrade's own servers.

One area of TD Ameritrade that held up during technology problems was its thinkorswim platform. Ameritrade purchased the options brokerage a year ago to advance its trading technology and boost its presence in the active trader market.

Investors who use that platform were able to get streaming stock quotes and didn't experience the same service difficulties.

"We will learn something" from these problems, Kelley said, adding that TD Ameritrade considered leaving its thinkorswim platform separate so that it could use its quote delivery system.

"This may give us another point of redundancy," he said.

Kelley said one potential silver lining for Ameritrade and clients was that the incident Tuesday occurred on a day when the stock market was fairly stable and had low trading volume.

The service disruption "happened at time that was better, if you can say it's ever a better time," he said.

TD Ameritrade didn't have any website issues during the May 6 "flash crash," but experienced a surge in its trading volume, along with its rivals Charles Schwab Corp. (SCHW) and E*Trade Financial Corp. (ETFC).

Representatives for Schwab and E*Trade said they had no website problems on Monday or Tuesday.

Shares of TD Ameritrade closed Wednesday down 8 cents at $17.71.

-By Brett Philbin, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2173; brett.philbin@dowjones.com
E*Trade Financial (MM) (NASDAQ:ETFCD)
Historical Stock Chart
From May 2024 to Jun 2024 Click Here for more E*Trade Financial (MM) Charts.
E*Trade Financial (MM) (NASDAQ:ETFCD)
Historical Stock Chart
From Jun 2023 to Jun 2024 Click Here for more E*Trade Financial (MM) Charts.