Brazilian Bank Apologizes for Mistaken Liquidation Alert

(Bloomberg) — Nu Holdings Ltd. co-founder Cristina Junqueira apologized to Nubank customers who received an app alert informing them that the bank was liquidated, saying a software programmer accidentally caused the erroneous notification.

“It’s really weird, but that’s exactly what happened: an operational error,” Junqueira wrote late Friday in response to questions from his followers on Instagram. It said an employee accidentally triggered a protocol designed for situations involving bank liquidations after submitting an internal request for software changes.

“The messages went out to a very small portion of customers, but of course it caused some disruption,” Junqueira said. “We sincerely apologize to anyone who received this information.”

Nubank said on Saturday that a developer had accidentally triggered a communications workflow related to the liquidation of financial institutions. “Since no actual institution was associated with this workflow, the company name appeared as a default placeholder,” according to the bank.

Bank liquidations have become a sensitive issue in Brazil after the central bank dissolved Banco Master SA in November. Authorities claimed the lender was at the center of the nation’s largest-ever fraud. Some smaller financial institutions were liquidated due to their ties to Banco Master.

Nubank and regulators quickly denied that the bank was insolvent after messages were published saying the central bank was liquidating it. The company said it was investigating the circumstances that led to the error and was informing affected customers that the bank was operating normally.

The incident sparked a wave of controversy on social media, with users questioning whether the message was real.

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