Perhaps crazy markets and staff shortages due to the coronavirus have left the brokers rather vulnerable and their systems seriously stress tested. No trading is better for their bottom line in such a situation I guess.

Ironically I put some of my peer2peer money in an account that was meant to be instant access so that in times like this I could quickly move it out to safety and the first thing that the P2P company did was stop withdrawals from the instant access account! I can still drip feed money out of the longer term accounts so I would have done better to put it there and got a better rate of return too! It is an example of how when things are not normal we should expect the unexpected.