They aren’t a hedge fund (no profit sharing) and take .25% in fees a year. $11b *.25% is only $27.5m. Hardly a unicorn scale business IMO unless they are pitching investors they’ll get to Blackrock scale (trillion in AUM). Personally I don’t see it. Switching cost is big for existing clients but new clients have a bunch of Robo options now including free ones offered by Schwab, big banks, etc.
For some perspective, after college I worked for an investment fund with around $3b AUM with around 7-8 full time staff with a similar fee structure...it was basically a nice lifestyle company for the two founders.
This article says 500 Million valuation last year, so halfway to a unicorn.
Regulatory actions don't happen in a vacuum and they aren't forgotten. Repeat actions don't necessarily get the same fine, and additional consequences (like more scrutiny for approval, more intense audits, etc) can come from ignoring regulations.
But also remember that these are large organizations being regulated in many many different and often vague ways. Violations happen and are dealt with.
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That intern got a good recommendation!
Well, guess what? They weren’t, but they took it as a calculated risk and the SEC announced they made the right choice when this fine was announced years later.