Nationwide settles claim it manipulated fund orders for 15 years

(Bloomberg) — Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co., the insurer whose slogan says it is “on your side,” will settle claims it delayed mail deliveries, allowing mutual funds underlying its products to be repriced before it carried out customers’ orders.

Nationwide agreed to pay $8 million to end the case, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday in a statement. The SEC claimed that Nationwide delayed the mail at post-office boxes for a 15-year period through September 2011, so that buy and sell orders weren’t recorded until after a daily deadline for repricing the funds.

Nationwide processed the orders “at the next day’s prices in violation of the law,” Sharon B. Binger, director of the SEC’s Philadelphia office, said in the statement.

The policyholder-owned insurer said the agency didn’t allege that it benefited from the practice, or that some investors received preferential treatment.