Aon Hewitt Investment Consulting says SEC investigation has ended

Aon Hewitt Investment Consulting said Wednesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission has ended a yearlong investigation into its marketing materials without bringing enforcement action against the firm.

The SEC initially notified Aon in the first quarter of last year that it had shifted a routine examination from 2017 into an enforcement investigation into its marketing materials and custodial fees charged to several clients, the company told Pensions & Investments in November.

Aon later learned that the regulator had shifted the investigation's focus to "the calculation of a single metric in marketing materials," the firm said in a December update on the matter via an emailed statement.

On Wednesday, an Aon spokeswoman said the SEC had concluded its investigation as of the first quarter.

"I can confirm that the SEC ended its inquiry with no enforcement action," the spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman declined to comment further on the metric in marketing materials that prompted the inquiry.

An SEC spokeswoman declined Wednesday to comment on the investigation.

As of Dec. 31, Aon had about $110 billion in assets under management on a discretionary basis and $2.8 billion in assets on a non-discretionary basis, according to the firm's most recent Form ADV filing.

Aon Hewitt Investment Consulting, a Chicago-based subsidiary of Aon PLC, is a registered investment adviser with the SEC and provides investment advisory and consulting services to institutional investors.