The list of financial-services companies that have reached "no-contest" settlements for overcharging or shortchanging their clients keeps growing. The first of nine such settlements with the Ontario Securities Commission was in November 2014 with three TD Bank subsidiaries. The most recent, on Dec. 21, was with CI Financial Corp.'s Assante subsidiaries.
In all cases, there are no admissions of intentional wrongdoing. But the grand total to date of the make-good payouts -- $358 million -- speaks volumes about how thousands of retail investors were poorly served by their trusted financial providers.
Most of the settlements involve brokers and dealers that charged twice for the same advisory services, and allowed fund investors to bear excessive management fees. The biggest single settlement involved mutual funds that weren't credited with income that the funds had earned.
