Exchange Collapsed or Froze Your Withdrawals? What You Can Claim
Platform failures are different from scams. The money often still exists somewhere in an estate, and the routes to it are creditor claims, regulatory schemes and claims against whoever advised you into it — each with its own deadline.
Last reviewed: August 2026
Step 1: Work out what has actually happened
The right action depends entirely on the cause, and platforms are rarely candid about it early on.
- Insolvency or administration — an office-holder is appointed and a formal claims process follows
- Liquidity suspension — withdrawals paused while the business tries to trade through it
- Regulatory action — a regulator has restricted the firm; check the regulator's own notices
- Account-level hold — a compliance or source-of-funds review affecting only you
- Fraud — the platform never held the assets at all
Step 2: Preserve proof of your holding
Before access disappears, download everything: account statements, transaction history, deposit and withdrawal records, the terms you signed up to, and any correspondence about the freeze. Export in the platform's own format and take screenshots as well. Creditor claims are won and lost on documentary proof of what you held and when.
Step 3: Register as a creditor
Insolvency practitioners publish claim portals, forms and bar dates. Register early, keep the reference, and respond to every information request. Where the estate is overseas, there may be parallel proceedings in more than one jurisdiction — claim in each that covers your account.
Be realistic: distributions in these estates commonly take years and rarely return the full balance. That is precisely why the second route below matters.
Step 4: Look at who advised you into it
If a regulated adviser, accountant, wealth manager or introducer put you into the platform, the questions are: what due diligence did they do, was the recommendation suitable for your risk profile, did they disclose commissions, and were they even authorised for that product?
Professional negligence claims run against the professional's compulsory insurance rather than a failed exchange, which is why they often produce a far better outcome than the insolvency. In the UK, claims against failed regulated advice firms may also fall to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
Step 5: Check the payment route as well
Deposits made by card may still be within chargeback deadlines. Bank transfers made shortly before a known failure, or after a regulator warning was published, raise questions about the sending bank's monitoring. Both are separate potential claims from the insolvency.
Deadlines that catch people out
- Insolvency bar dates — fixed, published, and unforgiving
- Card chargeback windows — months, not years, from the transaction
- Ombudsman complaints — normally six months from the firm's final response
- Negligence limitation — generally six years, with a possible three-year discoverability extension
Get the whole picture assessed at once
Most people pursue only the insolvency claim and never examine the adviser or the payment route. Send us your statements and the advice you received; the assessment is free, and if the only realistic route is the creditor process, we will tell you that rather than sell you a claim.
Common questions
My exchange froze withdrawals. Is that the same as a scam?
Not necessarily. Frozen withdrawals can mean insolvency, a liquidity problem, a regulator intervention or a compliance hold on your specific account — as well as outright fraud. The response differs in each case, so establish which one you are facing before deciding what to do.
How do I claim in an insolvency?
Insolvency practitioners publish a claims process with strict cut-off dates. You register as a creditor, prove your holding with statements and transaction records, and wait for distributions. Missing the bar date can exclude you entirely, so diarise it as soon as it is announced.
Can I claim against the person who recommended the platform?
Potentially, and this is often the more valuable route. Where a regulated adviser, accountant or introducer recommended an unsuitable or unregulated platform without proper due diligence, a professional negligence claim against them — and their insurer — may recover far more than the insolvency ever will.
Should I accept a buy-out offer for my claim?
Claims-trading firms sometimes offer to buy creditor claims at a discount. That can be sensible for certainty, but take advice on the likely distribution first — accepting early can mean surrendering a much larger eventual recovery.
Free, no-obligation case assessment
Tell us what happened and we will tell you honestly whether your loss is realistically recoverable. If it is not, we say so — there is no charge and no obligation to proceed.
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