A new report issued this afternoon by securities regulators shows that nearly one in three sales of front-end-load mutual funds between November 2002 and January 2003 did not receive the breakpoint sales charge it should have.
On average, that failure cost investors $364 in lost discounts per transaction, according to the regulators that released the study.
The report, jointly issued by the
The breakpoint failures were apparently unintentional, the regulators found, and were more frequent with electronic orders rather than paper ones.
As a result of the findings, 2,000 broker/dealers are being told to review samples of their mutual fund sales transactions and report the results to the NASD.