A financial adviser has been disqualified from acting as a director after misusing his position in regards to the sale of self-invested personal pension investments.
The Insolvency Service banned Keith Popplewell for nine years after failing to ensure that his firm, The Pensions Office, had properly advised its clients on pension transfers.
His actions resulted in the Financial Services Compensation Scheme paying out more than £1.5m on 61 claims, with a further 169 under assessment.
Mr Popplewell failed to advice clients on the high-risk unregulated underlying investments in the Sipps, much of which was into Storepod investments.
In a statement The Insolvency Service said: “TPO also failed to take into account financial circumstances, needs and objectives and attitude to risk when advising clients and failed to ensure that adequate systems, controls, risk analysis and management information were put in place.”
According to The Insolvency Service, at least 327 clients of TPO invested a total of at least £12m into storepods - a means of self-storage - which were unregulated, high-risk investments.
It also found Mr Popplewell failed to ensure that six-monthly client compliance reviews took place, with the last of these happening in September 2010.
Mr Popplewell is listed on the Financial Conduct Authority register as inactive while The Pensions Office, which was based in Sheffield, is no longer authorised.
damian.fantato@ft.com
