On February 28, Reuters reported that Citigroup mistakenly credited a customer's account with $81 trillion instead of $280, taking hours to rectify the transaction. This incident, described as a "near miss," shed light on operational challenges the bank is working to address, as per the Financial Times.
The error occurred in April last year and was overlooked by a payments employee and a second official responsible for verifying the transaction before processing it the following day, according to the Financial Times, which referenced an internal account and sources familiar with the matter. A third employee detected the mistake 1.5 hours after processing, with the transaction corrected several hours later by Citigroup.
Citigroup disclosed the near miss to the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), confirming that no funds actually left the bank. In a statement to Reuters, Citigroup explained that their "detective controls" promptly identified an input error between ledger accounts, reversing the transaction, with no impact on the bank or the client.
Notably, Citigroup experienced 10 near misses of $1 billion or more last year, a decrease from 13 incidents the previous year, as per an internal report obtained by the Financial Times. When approached for comment on the report, Citigroup declined to respond.
Furthermore, Citi's CFO, Mark Mason, recently highlighted the bank's increased investment in addressing compliance issues related to regulatory fines for inadequate risk management and data governance. Mason emphasized the importance of improving data, technology, and regulatory reporting quality.
It is worth noting that Citigroup faced a $136 million fine last July for insufficient progress in resolving compliance issues and a $400 million penalty in 2020 for failures related to risk management and data.