Unless you exclude yourself from the Settlement or have already excluded yourself from the Class, you are eligible to receive a Cash Payment, unless your pro rata share of the Settlement is less than $10. There is no need to file a claim. The objective of this Plan of Allocation is to distribute the Settlement proceeds equitably among those Class Members who allegedly suffered damages. The Plan of Allocation is not a formal damage analysis, and the calculations made in accordance with the Plan may not be equivalent to what Class Members would have recovered after a trial. Nor are the calculations in accordance with the Plan of Allocation estimates of the amounts that will be paid to Eligible Class Members under the Settlement. The computations under the Plan of Allocation are only a method to weigh, in a fair and equitable manner, the claims of Eligible Class Members against one another for the purpose of making pro rata allocations of the Net Settlement Fund.

Your Cash Payment will be based on your “Individual Recognized Claim,” which is determined as follows:

For each month in which you maintained a Merrill Edge self-directed retirement account, the cash balance on the last Friday of the month will be multiplied by the difference between (a) Plaintiff’s estimate of a reasonable annualized rate of interest that should have been paid on your cash balance, minus (b) the annualized rate that was actually paid on that cash balance, (c) multiplied by the calendar days in that month divided by 365 (or 366 for leap years).
The Individual Recognized Claim is the sum of each month’s calculation.
The Individual Recognized Claim amounts will be used to calculate pro rata Cash Payments from the Net Settlement Fund based on the amount of your Individual Recognized Claim divided by the aggregate Individual Recognized Claims of all Class Members.
Annexed at the end of the Long-Form Notice on the Important Documents page is a chart broken down by tier¹of [A] Plaintiff’s estimate based on her expert’s analysis of a reasonable rate of interest that should have been paid on cash balances broken down by tier and month during the Class Period, [B] the annualized rate that was actually paid on that cash balance, [C] the difference between [A] and [B] multiplied by the calendar days in that month divided by 365 (or 366 for leap years), and [D] an estimate, solely for illustrative purposes, of a hypothetical Class Member’s “Individual Recognized Loss” for that month assuming the hypothetical Class Member held a $10,000 cash balance on the last Friday of that month.

NOTE: You will not receive any payment if your pro rata share of the Net Settlement Fund is less than $10.

If you wish to receive your Cash Payment electronically instead of by check, please submit an Electronic Payment Request. The amount of your individual Cash Payment depends on many variables that will not be known before the Settlement Hearing, including the amount of attorneys’ fees and Litigation Expenses and Service Award awarded, and the amount of Administrative Costs and Notice Costs incurred. Accordingly, neither the parties nor the Administrator can reliably estimate your individual Cash Payment at this time.

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