The Financial Conduct Authority has banned financial adviser Geoffrey Armin for "seriously incompetent" advice on £125m of pension transfers which resulted in losses for clients of nearly £4m.

Despite the losses and the fees he earned, Mr Armin has not been fined by the FCA but has been ordered to pay £200,000 to the FSCS to help meet the near £4m compensation bill to his clients.

Mr Armin was originally fined £1.28m by the FCA in 2021 but referred the matter to the Upper Tribunal.

He withdrew his case recently after reaching a settlement with the FCA which said he did not have sufficient assets to pay a large fine.

The FCA has agreed with Mr Armin that in lieu of the imposition of a financial penalty, the sum of £200,000 be paid direct to the FSCS to contribute towards any redress due to his customers.

The £200,000 that Mr Armin has agreed to pay represents substantially "all of his remaining assets available to meet a penalty or judgment," the FCA said.

The FCA said it had banned Mr Armin from advising customers on pension transfers and pension opt outs and from holding any senior management function in a regulated firm.

Mr Armin, who ran Matlock, Derbyshire-based Retirement and Pension Planning Services Limited (dissolved), was described by the FCA as, “seriously incompetent when advising on defined benefit (DB) pension transfers.”

He advised 422 customers on the transfer of their DB pensions, including 183 members of the British Steel Pension Scheme – 174 of whom transferred out of the scheme following his recommendations.

Advice fees on these transfers added up to £2.2m, 55% (approximately £1.2m) of which was retained by Retirement and Pension Planning Services and Mr Armin.

When advising his customers, Mr Armin routinely failed to obtain the necessary information he needed to assess the suitability of a pension transfer and provided unsuitable advice as a result, the FCA said.

In some cases, Mr Armin only informed customers of the consequences of giving up the valuable guaranteed benefits offered by their DB pension after they had already transferred out of the scheme.

To date, the FSCS has paid out £3,961,517 in compensation to Mr Armin’s customers.

The total value of transfers on which Mr Armin advised was £125m, £74m of which related to the British Steel Pension Scheme. The average transfer value for customers advised by Mr Armin was approximately £298,000.

Therese Chambers, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said: "Mr Armin gave bad advice and pocketed large fees for doing so. People rely on the advice they’re given for financial security into old age.

"Mr Armin’s advice not only put at risk the pensions people had worked for, it also eroded the trust between advisers and clients. Such callous incompetence has no place in financial services."

Mr Armin's Upper Tribunal hearing was due to commence on 11 September. However, on 6 September he agreed to pay a substantial proportion of his assets to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) as compensation and withdrew the referral. Without this settlement, Mr Armin’s assets would have been spent on the costs of the Upper Tribunal proceedings leaving nothing to pay redress or a fine, the FCA said.