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Edward Jones to pay $17M for mutual fund overcharges, violating Obama-era fiduciary rule

State securities regulators discovered gaps in the firm’s supervisory process, when customers moved from brokerage to advisory accounts and the financial services firm implemented new policies in response to the now-defunct fiduciary rule.

By Lynn Cavanaugh | January 09, 2025 at 12:27 AM
Edward Jones in Markham, ON. Credit: Raysonho via Wikimedia Commons;

After a four-year investigation, regulators have reached a $17 million settlement with financial services firm Edward Jones & Co. resulting from an investigation into the broker-dealer’s supervision of customers paying front-load commissions for Class A mutual fund shares, the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) announced on Wednesday.

The NASAA, which represents state securities regulators, “found gaps in Edward Jones’ supervisory procedures,” according to the NASAA. The association accused Edward Jones, which has 20,000 brokers, of improperly charging upfront commissions on mutual fund shares in cases where customers soon after moved those assets into investment advisory accounts that assess an annual fee. Edward Jones, for example, offered fee reductions for those customers for one or two years, but they were not sufficient to cover the full upfront commission that in some cases was as much as 5%. 

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