Citi accidentally credits client account with $81 trillion: FT

Citigroup Inc. erroneously credited $81 trillion to a customer’s account instead of $280 last April before reversing the transaction hours later, according to the Financial Times. 

The transfer was missed by two employees and detected by a third employee 90 minutes after it was posted, the report said. No funds left the bank, and it was disclosed as a “near miss” to the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to the report. 

“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,” a Citigroup spokesperson said in an emailed response. “Our preventative controls would have also stopped any funds leaving the bank.”

The incident had no impact on the bank or its client, the statement added.

A total of 10 near misses of $1 billion or more occurred at Citi last year, according to the FT, citing an internal report. While it’s down from 13 cases in previous year, the report said near misses of greater than $1 billion were unusual across the US bank industry.