Investors Fled to Low-Cost Funds: Morningstar Investors paid less in fund fees last year mostly because they went for low-cost funds, according to Morningstar’s U.S. Fund Fee Study, an annual review. “Asset-weighted fund fees fell to 0.37 percent in 2022 from 0.40 percent in 2021. This might not sound like much, but it amounted… Read More >>
Equitable Pays $50M to Resolve Annuity Fees Case
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reports that it has charged Equitable Financial Life Insurance Company with fraud, “for providing account statements to about 1.4 million variable annuity investors that included materially misleading statements and omissions concerning investor fees.” Equitable has agreed to compensate harmed investors, most of whom are public school teachers and staff… Read More >>
Stifel Nicolaus Fined $3.6M on UIT Violation Charges
Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., an investment bank, has been fined $3.6 million by FINRA, a regulatory authority for the financial services industry, for allegedly having an inadequate supervisory system in place to detect potentially unsuitable unit investment trust (UIT) rollovers, and also for failing to provide customers with accurate information so they can make… Read More >>
Billion-Dollar Settlements Sting A-List Banks and Investors
The best known aphorism attributed to the late U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen, the honey-voiced Republican Minority Leader in the LBJ era, is “a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” One wonders what Dirksen would make of the multi-billion-dollar settlements that Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and other giant banks… Read More >>
