Mortgage disruption follows global Microsoft outage

At a glance	Details
Who	Canadian and UK mortgage professionals
What	Microsoft 365 services
Scale	more than 70 countries
Duration	more than 19 hours
Workaround	phone, text and WhatsApp

Mortgage professionals in Canada and the UK reported delayed documents, reduced email traffic and disrupted customer records during a global Microsoft 365 outage. Major services began recovering after disruption lasting more than 19 hours, although Outlook and Teams were still experiencing problems, The Independent reported.

Disruption reaches more than 70 countries

Mortgage Solutions reported that the disruption had reached more than 70 countries, including the UK financial services sector. Director Michelle Lawson said her tasks had been affected, although the interruption gave people a reason to pick up the phone. She said there was still work she could complete, including account-related tasks.

Lawson had not submitted any mortgage applications and therefore had not encountered an effect on that process. Her CRM made the situation manageable because, even when email was unavailable, documents could still be sent by post and other means.

Principal adviser Scott Taylor-Barr said his CRM ran on Microsoft Syndicate, affecting both the system and his email. His firm was considering moving meetings from Teams to Zoom or Google Meet so that other platforms would be available if needed.

“Each component of our business that uses Microsoft, what’s the alternative?” — Scott Taylor-Barr, principal adviser at Barndale Financial Management

Taylor-Barr said he was holding off on permanent system changes while weighing the cost and effort involved. Switching email systems could involve temporarily giving people a personal address, creating a frustrating and time-consuming workaround. He had not tried to submit applications or access lender websites because he had completed his work earlier in the week, but said emails were heavily relied upon to progress new cases.

Document delays reach mortgage transactions

David Clarke, a Nova Scotia-based mortgage broker, said a lawyer requested identification documents for a refinance but did not receive them.

Clarke said that particular delay had no consequences, but he noted that the result could be different for a purchase closing with a hard deadline (Canadian Mortgage Professional). He also said some users might not realise that a message had failed to arrive, making it difficult to respond promptly. Clarke operated a personal Gmail account alongside a Microsoft-based email system, limiting his exposure, but still needed to call industry counterparts to clarify matters.

Paul Meredith, principal broker and president at PMT Mortgage Corp. in Toronto, noticed a marked drop in incoming email even though his team used Gmail. He and his team followed up with clients by phone and text. Taz Zaide of 6ix Mortgage Group said the outage had no effect on day-to-day operations.

Key facts reported by mortgage professionals included:

The global outage lasted more than 19 hours before major services began recovering.
Canadian brokers reported delayed document delivery, fewer incoming emails and a need to communicate by phone or text.
UK advisers reported pressure on email and CRM systems, with some brokers cancelling work for the day.

Recovery leaves contingency questions

Microsoft said its workplace tools had almost 500 million users.

Microsoft’s account shifted from initially citing elevated regional load to clarifying that traffic had not increased and that a large number of servers had become unexpectedly unavailable. The company later focused on automated health checks and the component processing them, describing a core process as overwhelmed. Software deployments and configuration changes were paused while recent changes were reviewed, although none was found to correlate with the start of the disruption (The Conversation).

Microsoft said there was no indication that the outage resulted from malicious or cyber activity. Its teams were reviewing what happened and how similar issues could be prevented in future. The affected list included Outlook, Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Copilot 365, Planner, Exchange Online and Microsoft Defender.

Taylor-Barr said the episode reinforced the Financial Conduct Authority’s request for firms to review their resilience. Other advisers cited alternative email providers, postal mail, text messages and WhatsApp as ways to continue communicating during an outage.

For buyers financing a purchase, the reported effects were procedural: mortgage documents, case updates and adviser communications could be delayed. Separate reading covers environmental risk in England’s mortgage market.

Justin Moy, managing director at EHF Mortgages, said the episode demonstrated the mortgage industry’s reliance on Microsoft. Moy used Google Business and a MacBook and was not affected, but said some lenders appeared to be operating normally because a few mortgage offers had arrived. He also said some brokers in a WhatsApp group of around 70–80 had written off the day, making it a three-day weekend for them.