The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced settling charges against Interactive Brokers LLC. According to the regulator, the futures commission merchant failed to diligently supervise its employees’ handling of exchange fees charged to customers.
The US watchdog found that Interactive Brokers failed to ensure that its employees accurately assessed exchange fees for customer trades between January 2015 and December 2021. Specifically, the company failed to implement necessary changes to exchange fee schedules. As a result, the company charged customers executing certain spread trades the non-member exchange fee applicable to outright trades.
The official CFTC announcement stated that Interactive Brokers charged customers the higher fee, but it ended up paying the exchange the lower fee applicable to spread trades. The company overcharged its customers a total of $710,828.14.
According to Interactive Brokers, where the firm confirmed that a current customer was overcharged, it refunded the amount. The firm also stated that it notified former affected customers about how to obtain their overage refund.
The CFTC requires Interactive Brokers to cease and desist from violating regulation addressing supervision and pay $710,828.14 in disgorgement and $300,000 civil monetary penalty.
Earlier in June, the CFTC announced bringing charges against crypto exchange Gemini for making false statement.
