http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/11/news/world/bank-error-napping/index.html
Speaking of transaction banking and exception management, a bank clerk nodded off for a second while processing a transfer request and held down the number 2 on his keyboard, changing the amount from 62.40 Euros to 222, 222, 222.22 Euros, according to testimony
before a German court. The payment request had been approved by a colleague, who has spent less than 1.4 seconds examining 603 payments... and this approving colleague has been fired (they forgot to say what's happened to the originating clerk).
Anyways, I wish I had a dollar for every time when a banking executive tells me that nothing like this would ever happen at their bank. Needless to say, it does.
In this case, they spotted the exception before it was too late. Not in well-known cases of some other banks.
The morale is that most backroom operations and technology has been designed for routine commodity transactions. Exception management is often an afterthought. But profits and sustainability are mostly in managing exceptions.