The Situation

You are the Head of Operations for Scotiabank in the Virgin Islands, Caribbean. Your internal auditor (whose job

is to check random samplings of work that has been done for accuracy and correct procedure) has discovered

that a wire transfer in the amount of US$100,000 accidentally was sent in the amount of $1million. The

beneficiary stands to receive $1million even though you were paid $900,000 less by the sender. If the

beneficiary gets paid before you can somehow stop the wire, your bank could be on the hook to pay the

$900,000. That's an expensive mistake.

All outgoing wire transfers must be

completed by two employees, who check each others' work to

ensure no

errors are committed, as wires can be for very large amounts. In this case, a mistake was made by the person

filling out the order (Mike) and the second employee (Diana) did

n't check it closely enough and just signed the

order, authorizing the dispatcher to wire the money.

The International Head Office of your bank in New York City may be able to help you intercept the money. You

decide to call them and tell them what happened, providing all the details of the wire transfer. You know that

wire transfers of money to and from the tropics are a clunky process,

because you can't send the money directly

to any bank, but must use one or more intermediary banks to pass it along. As a result there might be a number

of banks the money has to pass through to get to its final destination; this can also take a little bit of time, but

you are unsure how long it takes. Head Office confirms this, saying the money will go from the Virgin Islands to a

bank in Toronto, then New York, who will send it to its final destination in Trinidad.

The head office representative advises you that because of the size of the error, this will be escalated to senior

head office officials who might be contacting us and doing further investigation on such an egregious error. They

advise you to send an urgent message over the wires through the same intermediaries

to 'recall' the funds,

referencing all the details of the wire.

You call the destination bank in Trinidad to advise them of the error. You are told that they have not yet

receiv

ed a wire for $1million that day; they will try to watch for it but can't guarantee anything as they are a

large, busy bank and may not catch it because of the volumes of wires they process across a number of

departments. You assign one of your employees to keep calling to check with them.

You are second in command at the bank. You report to Jim, the President of Scotiabank Virgin Islands, a 9

branch network with 175 total employees. You both work at the main VI branch. Jim is out for a long lunch with

a borrowing client and will be back later in the afternoon. He only checks emails in the evening, but will answer

his phone if he's available and depending on who is calling.

Although he's technically responsible for operations,

Jim focuses more on commercial

and real estate lending, so he doesn't understand any of the intricacies of wire

transfers. He leaves it to you to run a tight ship.

Questions:

1. What is the objective of this voice mail? 

2. You decide to call Jim and get his voicemail. What message do you leave? Write the script. (note, Jim doesn't like vague messages such as "call me, it's important").