AsianFin -- Citigroup mistakenly credited a customer's account with $81 trillion instead of $280, a glaring error that took hours to reverse, according to a report by the Financial Times on Friday.
The incident, described as a "near miss," underscores ongoing operational challenges at the bank, which has been working to address such issues.
The mistake occurred in April when a payments employee and a second official tasked with reviewing the transaction failed to spot the error before it was approved for processing the next day. A third employee detected the discrepancy an hour and a half after the payment was processed, and the transaction was reversed several hours later, the report said, citing internal accounts and sources familiar with the matter.
No funds were lost in the incident, as the error was caught and corrected before any money left the bank. Citigroup reported the near miss—a term used when a bank processes an incorrect amount but recovers the funds—to the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).
The incident highlights the risks associated with manual processes and the need for robust oversight in banking operations, even as financial institutions increasingly adopt automation and advanced technologies to minimize human error.
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