The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday announced settled charges against 79 investment advisers, among them Des Moines-based Principal Securities Inc., that will return more than $125 million to clients. Principal Securities’ share of the settlement is more than $1.7 million. The actions stem from the SEC’s Share Class Selection Disclosure Initiative, which the SEC’s Division of Enforcement announced in February 2018 in an effort to identify and promptly correct ongoing harm in the sale of mutual fund shares by investment advisers. The initiative included incentives for investment advisers to self-report violations of the Advisers Act resulting from undisclosed conflicts of interest, promptly compensate investors, and review and correct fee disclosures. Specifically, the SEC’s orders found that the settling investment advisers placed their clients in mutual fund share classes that charged 12b-1 fees – which are recurring fees deducted from the fund’s assets – when lower-cost share classes of the same fund were available to their clients, and did so without adequately disclosing that the higher cost share class would be selected.