HONG KONG - Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) said on Monday that it had reprimanded Swiss bank UBS AG and fined it HK$8 million ($1.03 million) for misclassifying its clients' professional investor status for more than 12 years.

A total of 560 joint accounts booked or managed in Hong Kong by the bank were misclassified, the regulator said.

In August 2021, the SFC reprimanded and fined UBS HK$9.8 million for various regulatory breaches, including failures of a similar nature, according to SFC.

The Hong Kong securities watchdog has since August stepped up scrutiny over banks' regulatory breaches, dishing out fines of HK$4.2 million to HSBC and HK$23.8 million to Deutsche Bank, respectively.