Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch wealth-management unit was fined $2.8 million Thursday by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for overbilling customers by $32.2 million over an 8-year period.
Merrill Lynch charged thefees to about 95,000 accounts between April 2003 and December 2011, the regulatory agency said in a statement.
New York-based Merrill Lynch, which was acquired by Bank of America in 2009, lacked an adequate supervisory system to ensure that customers werebilled in accordance with their contracts and disclosure documents, the regulator said.
“Investors must be able to trust that the fees charged by their securities firm are, in fact, correct,” Brad Bennett, the agency’s chief of enforcement, said in the statement.
Business, Pages 26 on 06/22/2012