SEC sues SoFi over conflicts of interest in proprietary ETFs

Federal securities regulators sued robo adviser SoFi Wealth for failing to disclose conflicts of interests when the money manager transferred client assets from third-party exchange-traded funds into two new investment vehicles sponsored by its parent company.

The San Francisco-based fund manager transferred the assets of about 20,000 clients in April 2019 without informing them the company preferred its ETFs over competitors and used the assets to help market and add liquidity to the new funds, according to a statement Thursday from the SEC. SoFi moved client assets without properly taking into account the tax consequences for its clients, according to the SEC.

SoFi Wealth, a unit of SoFi Technologies, agreed to pay a penalty of $300,000 without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings.