2015 Swiss franc de-pegging FX broker collapses
The Swiss National Bank's sudden removal of the franc's cap against the euro caused instant, extreme currency moves that bankrupted or crippled several retail foreign-exchange brokers worldwide, including Alpari UK.
The damage was public. The root cause was preventable.
The Swiss National Bank's sudden removal of the franc's cap against the euro caused instant, extreme currency moves that bankrupted or crippled several retail foreign-exchange brokers worldwide, including Alpari UK.
What the software actually got wrong
Brokers' automated risk-management and stop-loss systems were built to handle normal market gaps, not a discontinuous multi-percent instant repricing with no intervening trades, so client stop-loss orders could not be executed at anywhere near their intended prices, leaving brokers on the hook for enormous negative client balances.
Brokers' automated risk-management and stop-loss systems were built to...
Brokers' automated risk-management and stop-loss systems were built to handle normal market gaps, not a discontinuous multi-percent instant repricing with no intervening trades, so client stop-loss orders could not be executed at anywhere near their intended prices, leaving brokers on the hook for enormous negative client balances.
Requs AI Edge Case flags this exact pattern at the requirements and architecture stage — before a single line of code implementing it exists — so the assumption behind it gets challenged while it is still cheap to fix.
Beyond code coverage and "shall" testing
Root causes like this one rarely show up in code coverage or requirements-compliance testing, because nobody wrote a requirement anticipating the specific edge case that broke. Requs AI Edge Case and Requs AI Software FMEA are built to surface exactly this class of overlooked failure mode — before the software is written.
Surfaces this before code exists
Identifies edge cases like this one at requirements and architecture time, using the Common Defect Enumeration to catalog failure patterns seen across hundreds of real-world software failures — including this one.
Connects the failure mode to the hazard
Traces this class of root cause directly to the system-level hazard it can produce, so a defect pattern like this one gets flagged during design review instead of after it ships.
Find the overlooked root causes before they ship.
Schedule a demonstration, or explore how Requs AI Edge Case and Software FMEA use the Common Defect Enumeration.