WASHINGTON (AP) — Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Wells Fargoare paying a total $9.1 million to settle allegations by industryregulators that they sold billions of dollars of volatileinvestments without properly assessing their risks and whether theywere suitable for some retail customers.

Retail customers are individual investors as opposed toinstitutional investors such as pensionfunds and hedgefunds.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the securitiesindustry's self-policing organization, announced the settlementTuesday with the four banks. FINRA fined the banks a total $7.3million and they agreed to pay $1.8 million in restitution to somecustomers who bought the so-called leveraged and inverseexchange-traded funds from January 2008 through June 2009. Thebanks neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.

Traditional exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, track a market indexsuch as the Standard & Poor's 500 and can be traded throughoutthe day, unlike mutual funds. Leveraged ETFs seek to multiplyreturns of a market index or benchmark, often in volatile areassuch as commodities or currencies that involve derivatives likefutures contracts and swaps.

Inverse or "short" ETFs seek to bet against the index orbenchmark they track as protection against market downturns.

FINRA said that the banks lacked adequate procedures to monitorsales of leveraged and inverse ETFs by their brokers. The banksfailed to properly assess the risks of the investments andtherefore "did not have a reasonable basis to recommend the ETFs totheir retail customers," FINRA said. It said brokers maderecommendations that were unsuitable for some retail customers withconservative investment goals and risk profiles, and some customersheld the ETFs for long periods when the markets were volatile.

FINRA and the Securities and Exchange Commission have previouslywarned the investing public about the risks of leveraged andinverse ETFs, especially for those investing for the long term. Inaddition, FINRA imposed restrictions on leveraged ETFs in 2009,increasing the amount an investor must deposit with a broker beforehe or she can borrow to invest "on margin" in the products.

"The added complexity of leveraged and inverse exchange-tradedproducts makes it essential that brokerage firms have an adequateunderstanding of the products and sufficiently train their salesforce before the products are offered to retail customers," BradBennett, FINRA's executive vice president and chief of enforcement,said in a statement Tuesday.

Citigroup is paying a $2 million fine and $146,431 inrestitution; Morgan Stanley, a $1.75 million fine and $604,584 inrestitution; UBS, a $1.5 million fine and $431,488 in restitution;and Wells Fargo, a $2.1 million fine and $641,489 inrestitution.