The Central Bank has fined investment firm BCP Asset Management €210,000 after an enforcement investigation found nine of the firm’s retail clients were wrongly categorised as professional investors and afforded a lower level of protection as a result.
The regulator said the factors in deciding the size of the fine included the “seriousness” of the cases, the length of time of some of the breaches which extended up to four-and-a-half years, and “the firm’s conduct in altering two already signed declarations without the clients’ consent”.
The settlement closes its investigation with the firm, the Central Bank said. The inspection, which included a sample of the firm’s 50 professional clients, found nine clients were part of a BCP investment plan that required a minimum investment of €100,000 over three or five years. Most of the clients were signed up by the company’s retail intermediaries for the investment products designed for professional investors only.
The Central Bank said the BCP enforcement was the 11th action this year which resulted in the collection of almost €7.24m in penalties.
This year’s fines included the largest penalty in 2017 of €3.15m imposed on Bank of Ireland relating to breaches in procedures designed to protect against money laundering. At 16, the highest number of enforcement orders to be imposed were in each of the years of 2012 and 2013. By value, the largest penalty in any single year was €12.1m levied in 2016.
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