BWOne star: serious findings on the record, a recurring failure and a recent adverse finding.
BNY Wealth earns one star. What holds the rating down: serious adverse findings against this licence holder in the last ten years. The same kind of failure has recurred. In its favour: custody assets are protected by statute in the booking centre, with conditions a family should read. The file does not yet show whether past findings were remediated and whether external asset managers have a dedicated desk. The rating counts only what is on file.
Noam Cohen, Editor, Bank IntelligenceReviewed 6 November 2026, Q4 2026 edition. The rating weighs the public record together with what clients and their advisers tell us in confidence; retail products, branches and apps play no part.
The rating expresses the opinion of PPLI.com on the date shown. It is not a statement of fact about the bank, not a credit rating, not a forecast of failure and not investment advice.
What regulators, prosecutors and courts have decided, recorded against the legal entity they named, with the status, the amounts as published and a link to the original document. Claims and investigations still under way are marked as open.
The CFTC found that employees of The Bank of New York Mellon and an affiliate used unapproved messaging channels whose records were not kept, and on 4 September 2025 ordered a civil monetary penalty of USD 500,000, payable jointly and severally (CFTC Docket No. 25-01).
Respondents shall pay, jointly and severally, a civil monetary penalty in the amount of five hundred thousand dollars ($500,000)
The CFTC found that The Bank of New York Mellon misreported millions of swap transactions between 2018 and 2023, breached its 2019 CFTC order and failed to supervise its swap dealer business, and on 26 August 2024 ordered a civil monetary penalty of USD 5 million (CFTC Docket No. 24-18). The bank admitted the facts.
Respondent shall pay a civil monetary penalty in the amount of five million dollars ($5,000,000)
The CFTC found that The Bank of New York Mellon failed to report hundreds of thousands of swap transactions correctly to a swap data repository over more than five years, and on 30 September 2019 ordered a civil monetary penalty of USD 750,000 (CFTC Docket No. 19-42).
Respondent shall pay a civil monetary penalty in the amount of seven-hundred and fifty thousand dollars ($750,000)
The US Securities and Exchange Commission found that The Bank of New York Mellon, as ADR depositary, improperly issued American depositary receipts in thousands of pre-release transactions where neither the brokers nor their customers held the underlying foreign shares, inflating the number of tradeable shares and enabling abusive short selling and dividend arbitrage. Without admitting or denying the findings, the bank paid more than USD 54 million, made up of more than USD 29.3 million in disgorgement, USD 4.2 million in interest and a USD 20.5 million penalty.
The Federal Reserve assessed a civil money penalty of USD 16,000 against The Bank of New York Mellon on 28 August 2018 for a pattern or practice of violations of the flood insurance rules in Regulation H (Docket No. 18-016-CMP-SM).
The Bank is assessed and shall pay a civil money penalty in the amount of $16,000.
The FCA fined The Bank of New York Mellon London Branch and BNYMIL GBP 126 million jointly for CASS failures between 1 November 2007 and 12 August 2013, including not recording which group entity each client contracted with, inability to perform entity-specific reconciliations, commingling of safe custody assets with firm assets in 13 proprietary accounts, and using omnibus client assets to settle other clients' trades without express consent. A 30% stage 1 discount applied (GBP 180 million before). The London Branch is part of the same legal entity as the US bank.
£126 million for failing to comply with the FCA Client Assets Sourcebook
What clients meet at BNY Wealth, read from complaint registers, ombudsman decisions and court records, independent reporting and what clients and their advisers tell PPLI.com in confidence. Announcements by the bank, awards and marketing material are left out.
The CFPB complaint database holds 1,062 complaints against The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, the parent of the bank, from its start to 6 November 2026, a count that covers all of the group's US customers and not private clients alone. No complaints figure is published separately for BNY Wealth clients. The broker-dealer affiliate BNY Mellon Securities Corporation shows 8 arbitration disclosures on FINRA BrokerCheck.
Law360 reported a proposed class action by three investors against the parent, The Bank of New York Mellon Corp., alleging it failed to authenticate Barclays exchange-traded note offerings properly, which led to USD 17.7 billion of unregistered sales.
Treasury and Risk reported a USD 1.5 million SEC penalty on the sister company BNY Mellon Investment Adviser for implying that all investments in certain funds had passed an ESG quality review.
ThinkAdvisor reported the SEC settlement under which the bank paid USD 54 million over its handling of pre-released ADRs.
BNY Wealth does not publish its private banking fees. We searched its website on 6 November 2026 for a fee schedule, a tariff or a pricing page. We read its legal, documents and client information pages and searched the site in each language it uses. 96 of the 151 banks we cover publish theirs. A family cannot see what a relationship with BNY Wealth would cost before asking, so the cost transparency element of the PPLI.com rating gives BNY Wealth no credit for a published schedule, and the bank cannot be placed in our fee comparison. If BNY Wealth publishes a schedule, we will read it and add it in the next edition.
Banks that publish their fees, and how they compare, are listed on the comparison page. If you hold a proposal from BNY Wealth, our editors can place it against the published fees of other banks in confidence: write to [email protected].
Ownership is shown as published, with its date. It describes who owns the bank; it does not, by itself, suggest any wrongdoing by the bank or its owners.
Rows without a source link are taken from the published reports of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation. Sources: BNY 2025 Annual Report (financial highlights); BNY fixed income investor page (credit ratings).
Offered at this booking centreOffered by the group, not confirmed hereNot located, which does not mean unavailable
Checked on the bank's own pages, 6 November 2026.
If you bank with BNY Wealth or advise clients who do, your experience forms part of its PPLI.com rating. Every response is read by the editor and treated in strict confidence.
All 23 documents cited on this page, by subject.
Before we publish a significant negative finding that is not already public, we give the bank the facts and time to comment, on the same timetable for every bank. Decisions of regulators and courts are shown as they were published. Corrections we verify are published with the date of the change. Write to [email protected] quoting reference BK-US-BNY-30932F.
Families and their advisers read this file before they open an account. It can only be as complete as the documents we can find, and much of what sets a private bank apart, from its custody terms to the way a client team works, is rarely published.
If you represent BNY Wealth, one of our Bank Intelligence analysts can go through the file with you: correct anything that is out of date, add terms and documents that are not yet public, and set out what has improved since our last edition. The review is a paid engagement for the analyst's time and research.
The rating itself stays with our editor and follows what the documents show, so we cannot promise a particular result. When a review changes the file, this page notes that the bank took part, with the date and what was added.
Researched by the PPLI.com research desk from the public sources listed. The rating is our editorial opinion; read how we rate.
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