A financial regulator has fined Merrill Lynch $2.8 million for overcharging customers with fees and for failing to provide timely trade confirmations.
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said Thursday it fined Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith after it found the broker overcharged nearly 95,000 customer accounts fees of more than $32 million from April 2003 to December 2011.
The agency says Merrill Lynch has since returned the unwarranted fees, with interest, to the affected customers.
The regulators also found that Merrill Lynch failed to send customers trade confirmations for more than 10.6 million trades in over 230,000 customer accounts from July 2006 to November 2010. Merrill Lynch is a division of Bank of America Corp.
Merrill Lynch neither admitted nor denied the charges in settling them.