Citigroup accidentally credited a client with $81 trillion, not $280, report says

Citigroup (C-0.27%) mistakenly credited $81 trillion to a customer’s account last year and took hours to reverse the transaction, The Financial Times reports. The bank was supposed to credit just $280.

The error, which took place last April, was missed by two officials assigned to check the transaction before it was approved for processing, the Times reports. It was caught by a third employee who had detected a problem with the bank’s account balances more than an hour later.

In that case, no funds actually left Citigroup, which told the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that it was a “near miss.” A near miss is when a bank processes the incorrect amount meant to be transferred, but is able to recover the cash. A total of 10 incidents occurred at Citigroup last year, the Times reported, citing an internal report.

In a statement, Citigroup said a payment of that magnitude “could not actually have been executed,” noting that its detective controls caught the issue and the transaction was reversed. The incident, the bank said, “underscores our continued efforts to continue eliminating manual processes and automating controls through our transformation.”

Citigroup has focused on eliminating the possibility of such incidents after taking reputational and financial hits from past mistakes.

British regulators hit Citigroup with a $79 million fine last year over a May 2022 incident when one of its traders sold $1.4 billion worth of stocks on European exchanges, triggered a so-called “flash crash.” The trader had meant to sell just $58 million worth of stocks, but accidentally issued an order to sell $444 billion, the majority of which was blocked before being sold.

In 2020, Citigroup mistakenly used its own funds to pay off a $894 million loan owned by Revlon, a cosmetics company. Although some of the cash was returned by lenders, 10 of them had refused to give back the funds.

Citigroup and those 10 firms reached a settlement in late 2022, after Revlon filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Then-Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat said in September 2020 he would retire ahead of schedule, with reports pointing to regulators’ frustration over the company’s inability to fix risk and compliance issues.

His successor, Jane Fraser, has pledged to address the bank’s issues. Citigroup has been conducting a massive reorganization since late 2023 and is investing heavily in data and technology investments.

“Fragmented tech platforms, manual processes and controls, and a weak first line of defense, too few subject matter experts,” Fraser told analysts last year. “This is a massive body of work that goes well beyond the consent order, and this is not old Citi putting on Band-Aids. This is Citi tackling the root issues head-on.”

The Federal Deposit Insurance Commission and Federal Reserve Board found continuing weaknesses related to data reliability and the firm’s compensating controls, the groups said in June. In July, Citigroup was fined $136 million for “insufficient progress” on improving its data handling.