Jack Gruber / USA TODAY NETWORK
It’s only natural banks are going to make some mistakes given the number of transactions they handle on a daily basis. However, Citigroup narrowly avoided a potential catastrophe after an error almost led to a customer receiving an $81 trillion deposit instead of the $280 they were supposed to get.
As things currently stand, Citigroup (which oversees Citibank) is the third-largest bank in the United States based on the value of the assets at its disposal, as the approximately $2.4 trillion it manages puts it only behind JP Morgan Chase (~$4.2 trillion) and Bank of America (~$3.2 trillion).
That’s certainly not a tiny number by any means, but it pales in comparison to the amount of cash that somehow almost ended up in a customer’s account before the transaction was aborted.
According to The Financial Times, that revelation came to light when Citigroup disclosed the incident that transpired last April to the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
The company says a customer who was supposed to receive a deposit of $280 was somehow scheduled to receive $81 trillion, with both an employee tasked with spotting that kind of error and another worker who was supposed to serve as a failsafe failing to flag the transaction .
It was eventually detected by a third person around 90 minutes after it was initially processed, and while it took several hours, Citigroup was able to cancel it from going through before recording what is officially referred to as a “near miss” in the banking industry (one that could have led to a loss but did not actually cause any damage).
While it’s safe to assume Citigroup would have been able to recover the money if it had been deposited, it likely would have had some major implications when you consider the sum represented 1828% of the assets it holds and around 65% of the estimated $123 trillion in cash that exists in the entire world.
The outlet notes that marked one of the 10 near misses Citigroup had involving a transaction of at least $1 billion in 2024, which was an improvement from the 13 it reported in 2023 but still doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence.
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