St. Petersburg-based Raymond James agreed Tuesday to a $15 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for improperly charging advisory fees on inactive retail accounts and charging excess commissions for investments in some unit investment trusts.

An SEC cease and desist order found Raymond James & Associates and Raymond James Financial Services Advisors failed to consistently perform promised reviews of advisory accounts that had no trading activity for at least one year.

Because the Raymond James units failed to conduct the reviews properly, they failed to determine whether the client's fee-based advisory account was suitable, the order said.

The units named in the complaint were Raymond James & Associates, Raymond James Financial Services and Raymond James Financial Services Advisors.

RJA and RJFSA, the advisory firms, "failed to conduct promised suitability reviews for certain advisory accounts, did not adopt policies and procedures reasonably designed to prevent violations concerning the suitability of fee-based advisory accounts, and overvalued certain assets that resulted in charging excess advisory fees," the complaint said.

RJA and RJFS failed to have a reasonable basis for recommending certain unit investment trust transactions to brokerage customers  "and failed to disclose the conflict of interest associated with earning greater compensation when recommending certain securities without providing applicable sales-load discounts to brokerage customers," the complaint said.

The order said recommendations for early sales and purchases resulted in customers incurring and Raymond James receiving greater sales commissions than would have been charged had the customers held the trusts to maturity and purchased new ones.

Raymond James also failed to apply available sales discounts to brokerage customers who rolled over their proceeds after selling a maturing trust to purchase another one, the SEC said.

"Investment advisers and broker-dealers have ongoing obligations to their clients and customers," said C. Dabney O'Riordan, co-chief of the SEC enforcement division's asset management unit. "Raymond James' failures cost their advisory clients and brokerage customers millions that will be repaid as part of this settlement."

To settle the charges, the three Raymond James units agreed to be censured and disgorge about $12 million representing inappropriate client advisory fees, trust commissions and prejudgment interest plus a $3 million civil penalty.

The three units agreed to make distributions to harmed investors.

"We are pleased to have these matters concluded and have revised our policies and procedures to address the supervisory enhancements required by the SEC at Raymond James and a number of competitor firms," the firm said in a statement. "The firm has completed remediation with the appropriate clients."