In April, Citigroup made two very costly near-miss overpays that were subsequently reversed, accidentally transferring $6 billion to a wealth account and $81 trillion to another client.
Both errors come just a few years after the bank accidentally sent $900 million to creditors of personal care product Revlon. That mistake went through, according to the Financial Times, and led to fines, a legal battle, and federal orders to improve the company’s internal controls and risk management procedures.
The $6 billion near-miss overpay was more than 1,000 times the intended transaction, according to Bloomberg. A staffer had pasted the account’s number into the field intended for the dollar amount.
The mistake was found out the next business day.
The bank told Bloomberg on Monday that it “promptly identified and corrected this inputting error, which had no impact to the bank or our client. In addition, we have implemented enhanced preventative measures which are consistent with Citi’s continuing efforts to eliminate manual processes and automate controls.”
The other near-miss was a much bigger overpay — the client got $81 trillion transferred to them when they should have only received $280.
After the initial wrongful transfer, which the company didn’t explain, both a payments employee and another worker assigned to check the transaction before it was approved for processing at the start of the next business day failed to recognize the overpay.
About 90 minutes after it was entered, a third employee who noticed issues with the bank’s balances saw the overpay. It was ultimately reversed hours later, sources familiar with the incident told the Financial Times.
“Despite the fact that a payment of this size could not actually have been executed, our detective controls promptly identified the inputting error between two Citi ledger accounts, and we reversed the entry. Our preventative controls would have also stopped any funds leaving the bank,” Citigroup told NBC News.
