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Feb 21UI That Looks Like $900 Million Bucks
by in News Roundup on 2021-03-22User experience, and its related topic of user interface design, are important. How important? Well the US government’s General Service Administration (GSA) took the time to build a website to explain what it is. What other proof do we need? Well not only did the GSA build a website, but they invested in the SEO necessary to make it top of Google organic search, right below the featured snippet from interaction-design.org.
Which is why the saga and ongoing story of Citibank’s debt repayment blunder all the more amazing. Here’s a quick recap:
- Revlon, which owed nearly $900 million to creditors from a 2016 debt facility, was working with Citibank to refinance their current obligations into a new loan
- Citibank, who managed loan payments, intended to send out $7.8 million of interest payments to creditors using a system called Flexcube
- Citibank intended to roll over the remaining loan principal into an internal “wash account” to avoid sending the entire amount owed to creditors
- Instead, the offshore Citibank contractor responsible for this massive responsibility, misread the Flexcube UI and sent $900 million to all of Revlon’s creditors
- Citibank begged for the cash back, and received $400 million back
- A judge ruled that the remaining creditors can keep the cash. Citibank is miffed.
- If you want more details written in only the way that Matt Levine at Bloomberg can, check out his piece from February.