RIA Compliance Blog
As illustrated in two recent cases, the SEC’s Enforcement Division continues to root out RIAs that receive excessive undisclosed fees, particularly 12b-1 fees and mutual fund revenue sharing payments. As we have noted repeatedly, the SEC has focused on this issue in the last several years. At issue is whether an adviser properly disclosed to its clients that its representatives or an affiliated broker-dealer would receive 12b-1 fees based upon the recommendation of a mutual fund share class that pays such a fee when other classes that do not carry such a fee are available to the client.
In the first case, SCF Investment Advisors (SCF), a California-based registered investment adviser, consented to more than $700,000 in monetary sanctions imposed by the SEC relating to the firm’s practice of receiving 12b-1 fees in advisory accounts without proper disclosure. According to the order, SCF used mutual funds and money market funds that paid 12b-1 fees, although the receipt of those fees was not disclosed to clients and less expensive alternatives were available. The firm’s affiliated broker-dealer also received revenue sharing payments, a practice that was also not disclosed. As a result of those charges, SCF and its affiliates were unjustly enriched, and the clients’ performance was lower than it would have been had the practices not existed.
In 2018, the SEC granted RIAs the opportunity to enter into consent orders that did not carry civil penalties by self-reporting the receipt of undisclosed 12b-1 fees. In those cases, however, the firms would nevertheless be required to reimburse clients the amounts received in 12b-1 fees. In April of this year, as a result of that self-disclosure initiative, the SEC announced that the initiative resulted in 95 RIAs returning nearly $140 million to their customers. Continue reading ›