Employees at the US-based international investment bank Citigroup inadvertently credited $81 trillion to a customer’s account instead of $280 owing to an operational error, according to the Financial Times on Friday, February 28.
According to the news portal’s article, the US-based investment bank’s blunder required hours to reverse the transactions, a “near miss” that demonstrates the bank’s operational flaws that it wanted to address in front of banking authorities. The blunder occurred in April 2023 and was overlooked by a payments staffer and the second official, who was tasked to review the transaction before it was cleared for processing the next day, according to the news site, citing persons familiar with the situation.
According to the news portal, a third employee discovered the error one and a half hours into the transaction, which was eventually reversed many hours later. Due to an operational error, no money were left with Citigroup, which referred to this as a “near miss” in front of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the United States Federal Reserve. According to the study, if an incorrect amount is credited, a bank can reverse the procedure to retrieve the monies. The institutional lender further stated that the occurrence had no impact on either the bank or the client.
According to the news story, these near misses are not required to be disclosed to banking regulators, thus there is no comprehensive public data on their occurrence across industries. Citigroup has failed to comment on this development, according to the news article. According to the article, the US-based international investment bank is investing more in compliance concerns, including regulatory fines for risk management and data governance, citing chief financial officer (CFO) Mark Mason’s January statement. “We saw the need to invest more in the transformation on data, on technology, to enhance the quality of the data that was coming out of our regulatory reporting,” said Mason, according to the news source.
