Thursday, June 4, 2020

Merrill Ordered to Pay $7.2 Million in Restitution to Customers

In what is reported to be the largest restitution order of the year, FINRA has ordered Merrill Lynch to pay more than $7.2 million to customers for what it says were unnecessary sales charges and excess fees.

The unnecessary charges and excessive fees related to mutual fund transactions, and according to FINRA affected over 13,000 accounts.

According to FINRA between April 2011 and April 2017, Merrill Lynch did not have reasonably designed supervisory systems and procedures to ensure that all eligible mutual fund investors received sales charge waivers or fee rebates available through rights of reinstatement. Instead, the firm relied on its registered representatives to manually identify and apply such waivers and rebates, an unreasonably designed system given the number of customers involved, the complexity of determining which customers were due sales charge waivers or fee rebates, and difficulty in calculating the amount of the waiver and rebate. In addition, Merrill Lynch did not reasonably monitor for missed reinstatements. Firm alerts were designed to capture only recently executed mutual fund transactions while, in fact, fee waivers were available in connection with some fund purchases for up to a year after initial sales.

Merrill Lynch neither admitted nor denied the charges, but consented to the entry of FINRA’s findings.