St James’s Place admits failing on value for money

One of Britain’s biggest wealth management groups has admitted failing to offer value for money when assessed on the performance of 36 out of 45 of its funds.
St James’s Place, which manages the nest-eggs of a million well-off families, admitted the failings in its newly published value assessment process.
Value for money in respect of fund performance was the most serious failing, but there were setbacks in other categories, too, including fund charges, quality of service and when the fund was assessed against competitors. Overall, St James’s Place was deemed not to have provided value to customers in 13 of its funds.
• My £10,000 bill from SJP for 13 years of advice I never received
Since 2019, fund managers operating in Britain have been required to perform an annual assessment of value for each of their funds under City rules designed to help to ensure better outcomes for investors.
The new verdict as of March 31 came too late to take account of some recent reforms introduced by St James’s Place but was still an improvement on last year, the business claimed. “The proportion of funds that delivered value increased from 60 per cent in 2023 to 70 per cent in 2024,” Tom Beal, its group investment director, said.
He also said that value for money assessments were difficult to make for the wealth manager because all its services, including the cost of individual advice, were included in the single fund charge.
• ‘My cash is stuck in SJP’s frozen fund’
St James’s Place was named recently as having some of the consistently worst-performing funds in the UK in the online investment platform Bestinvest’s Spot the Dog report.
The Cirencester-based company, a member of the FTSE 250, uses more than 4,000 self-employed financial advisers to sell its funds, which are exclusively marketed to clients. In July it reported net new client inflows of £1.9 billion, taking assets under management to £181.9 billion.
Sheila Nicoll, who chairs the St James’s Place unit trust group board, which oversaw the assessment process, said: “In many cases there are no fast fixes to areas we assessed as insufficient value or in need of improvement. Actions taken last year, such as manager changes and fee reductions, take time to feed through. But we cannot disregard their ongoing impact in this assessment period, even as SJP takes steps to address the causes.”
Shares in St James’s Place rose by 7p, or 1 per cent, to 739p.