NEW YORK CITY, New York: A routine banking transaction at Citigroup last April turned into a major blunder when the bank mistakenly credited $81 trillion to a customer's account instead of US$280, according to a report by the Financial Times (FT) this week.

The error, which took hours to reverse, was caught internally before any funds left the bank, but it underscores persistent operational challenges Citigroup has been working to address.

According to the FT report, two employees responsible for reviewing the transaction initially missed the mistake before it was processed the next day. A third employee finally caught the issue an hour and a half later, prompting the bank to reverse the incorrect credit several hours after it had been processed.

Citigroup disclosed the incident—which qualifies as a "near miss" because no funds were lost—to U.S. regulators, including the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

In response to inquiries, a Citi spokesperson told Reuters that the bank's "detective controls" quickly identified the ledger entry mistake and reversed it before it could impact the customer or the bank.

This isn't the first time Citigroup has faced scrutiny over its risk management systems. According to an internal report reviewed by the FT, Citigroup recorded 10 near misses of $1 billion or more in 2023, down slightly from 13 the previous year.

The bank has been under regulatory pressure to improve its internal controls. In 2020, Citi was fined $400 million for issues related to risk management and data governance, and in July 2023, it was fined an additional $136 million for failing to make sufficient progress in fixing those shortcomings.

Citigroup's Chief Financial Officer Mark Mason acknowledged last month that the bank is investing more in technology, data management, and compliance to strengthen its risk oversight.

"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.

Citigroup continues to strengthen its internal processes to reduce the frequency of such high-stakes errors. While the $81 trillion mistake was caught in time, it serves as a reminder of the risks associated with large-scale banking operations—and the importance of robust oversight mechanisms.