The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has imposed a civil penalty amounting to S$3.9 million on Credit Suisse for “failure to prevent or detect misconduct by its relationship managers” in its Singapore branch. MAS said in a statement that the relationship managers had “provided clients with inaccurate or incomplete post-trade disclosures, resulting in clients being charged spreads which were above bilaterally agreed rates for 39 OTC bond transactions”.
Specifically, the relationship managers “made false statements to their clients regarding the executed interbank prices and/or spreads charged” and “omitted material information that the spreads charged were above the agreed rates”. Investigations conducted by MAS revealed that the bank did not have adequate controls, such as post-trade monitoring, in place to detect the misconduct.
Credit Suisse has since admitted liability, paid the penalty, and compensated the affected clients. It has also taken steps to strengthen its internal controls to prevent the recurrence of such an incident.
