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Decades old software led to Citi's $1 billion transfer headache

Decades old software led to Citi's $1 billion transfer headache

Citi says defective software dating from the 1990s was the cause of a $1 billion wire transfer screw up earlier this month.

Citi is running multiple lawsuits to recover funds sent in error to creditors of the struggling cosmetics company Revlon.

According to Bloomberg, Citi was midway through a project to replace the obsolete software when a 'clerical error' - ie manual intervention was required - resulted in the transfer of the full $900 million debt repayment, rather than the interest that was due on the loans.

“We take pride in the role that we play as a global leader in financial services and recognise that an operational error of this nature is unacceptable,” Citigroup says in a statement. “We have put significant, additional controls in place until the new system is operational.”

Comments: (2)

A Finextra member
A Finextra member 27 August, 2020, 03:191 like 1 like

As if this is "news."  Anyone who worked in the SFS and/or TTS operations areas of Citigroup could tell you that this software was in place, was never scheduled for replacement, and is still used.  But, the operations areas of Citigroup's [as well as all other processing banks] are replete with multiple systems such as these … and this is simply the first reported instance of such a problem.  Heck, JPMorgan Chase is still running modules from MHT technology platform (among others)!

A Finextra member
A Finextra member 27 August, 2020, 20:56Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

Replace old system with @Ripple products. 

 

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