The Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority says a member firm should have been more careful to ensure that customers enrolled in a fee-based brokerage account program were getting good deals.
FINRA, Washington, will be collecting $1.2 million in fines from AXA Advisors L.L.C. in connection with concerns about monitoring of the company’s old fee-based CapAdvantage brokerage accounts.
FINRA also is requiring AXA Advisors to give $1.4 million in fees back to CapAdvantage account customers, and AXA Advisors has volunteered to give back another $1.2 million in fees, according to FINRA officials.
AXA Advisors is a unit of AXA Financial Inc., New York, which, in turn, is a unit of AXA S.A., Paris.
AXA Advisors has agreed to settle the CapAdvantage account matter without either admitting or denying FINRA’s allegations, and it notes that it brought some of the CapAdvantage account concerns to FINRA’s attention..
AXA Advisors “has completed payment of restitution to all affected customers,” the company says in a statement.
AXA Advisors also has dropped the CapAdvantage accounts from its product platform, the company says.