Credit Suisse AG has agreed to pay a $90 million penalty and admit wrongdoing after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it had misrepresented a key performance metric of its wealth-management business.

The SEC said Credit Suisse improperly disclosed how it determined its net new assets metric from the fourth quarter of 2011 through the fourth quarter of 2012.

"We cooperated with the SEC's inquiry and have undertaken appropriate internal remedial efforts," Credit Suisse said in a statement. "It is important to note that there are no allegations of intentional misconduct or that NNA numbers were incorrectly reported. Credit Suisse clients were not harmed."

The metric measures the total amount of inflow of assets-under-management from new and existing clients and can be increased by either bringing new business into the bank or by reclassifying assets-under-custody to assets-under-management.

The Swiss bank is alleged to have pressured employees to improperly reclassify some of the assets of a select number of high-net-worth individuals from assets-under-custody to assets-under-management in order to boost net new assets.

The SEC said Credit Suisse took a "results-driven approach that allowed targets to drive the timing and amount of NNA recognition" instead of reassessing the assets on a case-by-case basis.

The regulator said a Credit Suisse senior manager wrote in an email, "We need the case!!," to implore an employee to find a way to reclassify assets as assets-under-management.

The SEC said the bank undertook "meaningful cooperation" to help with the investigation and took that into account for the settlement.

Write to Austen Hufford at austen.hufford@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 05, 2016 14:35 ET (18:35 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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