The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission building in Washington. (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)

A San Francisco-based investment advisory company, its founder and a former executive will pay a total of $4.27 million to settle federal securities regulators' claims that they improperly diverted investors' funds to the company's parent firm for their own benefit, according to the terms of a settlement announced Friday.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced the settlement with LendingClub Asset Management, founder Renaud Laplanche and former chief financial officer Carrie Dolan. An order formalizing the settlement, which also contained a list of charges against the respondents, was released at the same time.

LendingClub will pay $4 million; Laplanche, $200,000; and Dolan, $65,000, according to the SEC order.

Additionally, the settlement provides that Laplanche will be suspended from the investment industry for a period of three years, though he can apply for reinstatement once that period is over.

LendingClub, Laplanche and Dolan were charged with fraud for diverting funds from LendingClub to LendingClub Corp., where Laplanche was also the founder and chief executive officer.

The SEC alleged that LendingClub Asset Management (formerly known as LendingClub Advisors), Laplanche, and Dolan each violated the anti-fraud provisions of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.

The SEC noted that LendingClub Corp.'s board of directors, which learned of the transfers after an internal investigation, self-reported to the SEC in May 2016.

The company “promptly self-reported its executives' misconduct and provided extraordinary cooperation,” the SEC said in a statement.

The SEC's order requires LendingClub to “prominently” post a copy of the order on its corporate website and to notify all potentially affected investors of the action either by email or regular mail.

According to the order: LendingClub Advisors, as it was known, provided investment advisory services to several other private funds that purchased loan interests offered by LendingClub Corp., a publicly-traded online marketplace lending company.

LendingClub Advisors and Laplanche were charged with causing one of the private funds it managed to purchase interests in loans that were at risk of going unfunded—and to benefit LendingClub, not the fund client, in breach of LCA's fiduciary duty, the order said.

The SEC also found that LCA, Laplanche, and Dolan improperly adjusted monthly returns for this fund and other LCA-managed funds to improve the returns they reported to fund investors.

“Investment advisers have an obligation to put their clients' interests ahead of their own,” said Daniel Michael, chief of the SEC's Complex Financial Instruments Unit, in the statement. “By using funds managed by LCA to benefit its parent company, LCA and LaPlanche failed to do so.”

“Investors depend on fund advisers to give them the straight scoop on performance so they can make informed investment decisions,” Jina Choi, the director of the SEC's San Francisco regional office, added in the statement. “Advisers who adjust their valuation processes to boost results are in breach of their duties to investors.”

Scott Edelman and Adam Fee of the New York office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy represented Laplanche. They released a statement from Laplanche: “I am pleased to have worked out a settlement with the SEC to put to rest any issues related to compliance lapses that might have occurred under my watch at Lending Club. Consistent with SEC policy, I have agreed not to admit nor deny the specific narrative of the events contained in the settlement order.”

LendingClub retained John Potter of the San Francisco office of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. He didn't return a call seeking comment on the settlement.

Neither did Susan Resley, of the San Francisco office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, who represented Dolan.