Citi Faces Scrutiny After $81 Trillion Error Amid Reform Efforts

BENGALURU, India — Citigroup accidentally credited $81 trillion to a customer’s account instead of the intended $280, in a mistake that took hours to rectify, according to a report by the Financial Times.

The incident, which took place in April 2022, underscores ongoing operational issues at the bank, which it has been attempting to address. The error was initially overlooked by a payments employee and a second official who was tasked with verifying the transaction before its processing the following day, per internal accounts and sources familiar with the event.

A third employee detected the mistake one and a half hours after the transaction was processed, leading to a reversal of the erroneous entry several hours later. Fortunately, no funds were disbursed outside Citigroup, the report indicated.

This near miss was reported to the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) as part of routine compliance procedures. Citigroup confirmed the incident in an emailed statement, asserting that its “detective controls” quickly identified the error between two ledger accounts, and emphasized that the blunder did not affect the bank or the customer.

Internal documents reviewed by the Financial Times revealed that Citigroup had experienced 10 similar incidents involving near misses of $1 billion or more in the past year, a decrease from 13 such occurrences the previous year. However, the bank has not provided a public comment regarding this particular report.

Citigroup CFO Mark Mason noted in a statement made last month that the bank is investing more significantly in addressing its ongoing compliance issues, which have led to regulatory penalties related to risk management and data governance. “We saw the need to invest more in the transformation on data, on technology, on improving the quality of the information coming out of our regulatory reporting,” Mason said.

This emphasis on reforms comes after Citigroup was fined $136 million last July for inadequate progress on its compliance issues, following a larger $400 million fine in 2020 stemming from various risk and data failures.