NEW YORK: Twelve major banks have tentatively agreed to pay $1.87 billion to settle allegations that they colluded to fix prices and lock out competitors in the market for insurance-like products widely traded before the financial crisis, according to a lawyer for investors.

The deal, if finalized, would be one of the largest US anti-trust settlements, said Daniel Brockett, a lawyer representing a Los Angeles pension fund among other plaintiffs. He said the final terms need to be hammered out, and a judge would still need to approve the deal.

Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and other banks met secretly to kill proposals that would put the trading of these insurance-like products onto an exchange through which they could be bought and sold like stocks and their prices made more transparent, according to a complaint filed in US District Court in New York. In keeping trading private in a “rigged” market, the banks cheated investors out of billions of dollars, the complaint alleges.

“There was no central place to go for a stream of prices. You had to go to the banks and they controlled the business and they charged high prices,” said Brockett, a partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. An investor “basically had to pay what they wanted.”