A Citigroup customer got a huge shock when they checked their bank account and saw that they had been credited $81tn instead of $280.
According to The Banker, the incident happened last April and the Financial Times says that the transaction was not detected by the assigned payments employee or the secondary reviewer. It then went through to be processed the following day.
The newspaper adds that the mistake wasn’t picked up until 90 minutes after the payment and the transaction was then reversed (probably much to the customer’s chagrin). The incident was reported to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The report adds that the funds didn’t actually leave Citigroup.
In a statement, Citigroup said: “While there was no impact to the bank or our client, the episode underscores our continued efforts to continue eliminating manual processes and automating controls,” the bank added.
The Banker adds that the banking group had “10 near misses involving $1bn or more” last year; and in August 2020, chief executive Michael Corbat left the company after a $900mn mis-payment to Revlon creditors.
