Hong Kong fines UBS for excessive customer charges
The Swiss institution must pay the CFS a total of approximately 47 million dollars, in addition to providing compensation to the affected customers
The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) issued a fine against UBS for $ 47 million for overcharging its customers between 2008 and 2017 and for committing serious and systemic failures in its internal controls.
The Swiss bank has pledged to compensate customers affected by these surcharges, which affected approximately 5,000 accounts in Hong Kong in some 28,700 transactions. In this way, the entity will return the amount charged in addition to the corresponding interest, which amounts to 25 million dollars.
The SFC considers that UBS not only did not fulfill the fundamental and general duty to act in the best interest of its clients, but also abused their unsuspecting trust by not disclosing conflicts of interest and charging them more in opaque transactions.
“The SFC expects intermediaries to maintain high standards of integrity when managing operations for customers. UBS was well below these expectations by systematically overloading a large number of customers for many years,” said Ashley Alder, CEO of the institution.
Likewise, UBS took disciplinary actions against more than 20 employees who had taken part in these bad practices, as well as appointed independent analysts to identify their root causes and assess their magnitude, as well as to review the adequacy and effectiveness of the remedies. adopted from UBS.
K. Tovar
Source: dpa
