New York, June 13, 2026, 14:05 EDT. FINRA fined Merrill Lynch $225,000 after the firm failed to properly report more than 1,600 customer complaints.
- Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. was censured by FINRA and hit with a $225,000 fine. The regulator said the firm failed to report some complaints linked to post-call survey comments.
- FINRA said Merrill got over 220,000 written survey responses in a 2023 sample, logged 2,423 complaints, and did not report more than 1,600 complaints.
- FINRA gave Merrill credit for flagging the problem itself, doing a lookback in 2023, fixing the problems it found, and telling the regulator about the complaints.
Merrill Lynch will pay a $225,000 fine and take a censure, according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, after FINRA said the firm did not correctly track or report customer complaints made in call-center surveys. The settlement, under case No. 2024081776401, covers the period from January 2018 to December 2023, with FINRA posting the action as of June 11.
Merrill asked support center callers to fill out post-call surveys with written feedback, according to FINRA, but then did not properly review that feedback for reportable complaints. FINRA said the firm missed its requirement to report complaints every quarter under Rule 4530(d), and also broke rules on supervision and conduct standards.
Merrill got over 220,000 written comments in its 2023 survey responses, the biggest sample in the settlement. The firm reported 2,423 customer complaints from those surveys and sent them to regulators on time. But FINRA said Merrill left out more than 1,600 written complaints from the same group of responses. Most missing complaints were about service problems. Some covered access to money, account info, documentation, technology issues and security lapses.
FINRA linked the failure back to Merrill’s oversight process. The firm had a lexicon of search terms to catch survey responses, but FINRA said it was made for consumer banking, not Merrill’s usual broker-dealer review. According to the settlement, over 85% of unreported customer complaints from 2023 survey responses did not get flagged as potential complaints.
FINRA relies on customer-complaint data to help spot and open probes into firms, individual reps and others who could threaten investors. Under FINRA Rule 4530(d), member firms have to file summary stats about written customer complaints by the 15th day after the end of the quarter when the firm got the complaint.
Merrill agreed to settle but did not admit or deny FINRA’s findings. The case started after Merrill self-disclosed in April 2024, according to FINRA. The regulator noted Merrill itself found the problem, reviewed 2023 survey responses from the past year, fixed the complaints it found and told FINRA about those. Merrill shut down the written-commentary field in its customer surveys back in January 2024.
Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, which FINRA lists as being based in New York, has over 27,500 registered reps and runs more than 4,000 branches, according to details in the settlement. Merrill calls itself a registered broker-dealer and investment adviser in its disclosures, and is fully owned by Bank of America Corp.
