Barclays will pay $97 million to settle SEC claims including allegations that the firm falsely charged clients for services that weren’t being performed.
The London-based bank overbilled customers by nearly $50 million through violations including imposing fees for due diligence that wasn’t being performed and collecting excess mutual fund fees by steering clients into more expensive share classes, the SEC said in a statement Wednesday.
Nearly two-thirds of advisors surveyed this month said that internal training programs or workshops were offered by their firms.
Virtually every major firm on Wall Street has joined the push into private markets, with many trying to get in early on the biggest "next big thing" to hit financial services since the exchange-traded fund.
Traci Parks has been a copy editor at American Banker since 2023. She's worked at Scholastic National Partnerships and many fashion magazines, including V Magazine where she was also a contributing writer. As a playwright, her work has been produced in New York, Seattle and Los Angeles.
Barclays agreed to settle the claims without admitting or denying the agency’s findings, and agreed to set a fair fund to return money to affected clients.
“Barclays failed to ensure that clients were receiving the services they were paying for,” said C. Dabney O’Riordan, co-head of the SEC’s enforcement division’s enforcement unit. “Each set of clients who were harmed are being refunded through the settlement.”
The bank will pay a $30 million penalty and more than $60 million in disgorgement and prejudgment interest.
Andrew Smith, a Barclays spokesman, declined to comment.
