Recently, we have had lots of chats with candidates considering the St. James’s Place Financial Adviser Academy. With so many opinions in the financial press and on social media, it can be hard to sort the wheat from the chaff!
But, you can rely on the BTS team to dig a little deeper and ask those difficult questions.
For some, the question has been ‘do I want to join a restricted or an independent firm?’. For others, it has been a more complex decision (it is never that simple!).
In this article, we asked SJP Financial Adviser Academy some of those tricky questions…
St. James’s Place recently announced that it has put aside £426 million to carry out a historical review of ongoing servicing and refund clients where there is a lack of evidence that ongoing servicing has been delivered.
Let’s break this down:
No, our advisers continue to service clients and this has only increased our focus on delivering ongoing servicing to clients.
In 2023 every client who paid for ongoing service was serviced and we automatically switched off charges and refunded clients who did not receive a review.
We are a leader in the financial advice profession, with 958,000 existing clients trusting us with their financial futures. SJP is consistently recognised by consumers, and are recipients of a range of awards, such as:
With the investments we have made in creating a supportive digital ecosystem for our advisers, coupled with our advice standards, we are well placed to service clients.
Well, as with most things, it’s usually a combination of factors.
St. James’s Place Culture
Since our inception in 1992, we have seen significant growth. Members of the SJP community now consist of over 4,800 financial advisers, nearly 10,000 support staff and 2,000 employees. Recognising growth has the potential to dilute our founding core values, we have doubled down on ensuring our culture is preserved.
Culture is the glue that binds us together and is one of our greatest assets. Our core values are evident in everything we do: acting with integrity, striving to be the best version of ourselves, and investing in long-term relationships.
When you join SJP, you’ll become part of a team that thoughtfully considers the impact of our work on the world around us. Over 75% of our community is engaged in supporting local causes through providing financial education to school children, charitable giving, and volunteering.
More than 80% of our members contribute monthly to our Charitable Foundation, now the third-largest corporate foundation in the UK. In 2023, we proudly reached a significant milestone of raising £130 million for the Foundation since inception.”
Spirit of the Partnership
At St. James’s Place, our Partnership is our key differentiator. This isn’t just a label for the 2,500+ businesses through which we achieve outstanding client results. It also embodies the spirit in which we offer a market-leading infrastructure, providing flexible and distinct support, leveraging the extensive expertise we have within our network.
We understand that people have unique goals when joining the Partnership, and we celebrate these differences. Our commitment to inclusivity and strength through diversity sets us apart. All Partners (business owners) and advisers will belong to one of 22 Locations, creating a sense of community within our Partnership.
Not only this, but everyone is also supported by a dedicated Business Partner, who is on hand to help support our Partners and advisers with everything required to thrive.
Responsible business
Becoming financially secure is important to many of us, but it’s only worthwhile if we have a healthy and sustainable world in which to enjoy any prosperity. SJP have set targets to ensure we’re set up as a responsible business:
We want to empower our Partnership to have open and honest discussions with their clients about climate change, and to be confident that they represent a company with a robust climate strategy. We believe responsible investment is key to achieving long term, sustainable returns, and financial wellbeing for our clients. If you want to learn more about our commitment, please visit our website here.
Share price movements reflect short-term market reactions and sentiment.
The fall in share price following the announcement of the ongoing servicing provision reflects market expectations of the impact on the business.
Alongside announcing the provision for potential client refunds, we reduced our shareholder pay-out ratio from 70% to 50%. The change was implemented to ensure sufficient profit is retained for continued investment in the business whilst we transition to our new charging structure.
For the avoidance of doubt, the uncertainty baked into the share price does not impact the financial security of the business, which remains very strong. SJP has high levels of solvency.
SJP also has robust statutory and regulatory controls protecting clients and their investments across all our products. This happens via a range of protection measures, including regulatory protection, industry compensation, safekeeping, and the assets held to back investments.
SJP’s share price rebounded significantly after its positive 2024 half-year results surpassed analyst forecasts (1st August 2024). For latest information on the share price, please visit our website here.
Clients trust us, and it shows – SJP holds a 4.4/5 Trustpilot score from over 1,629 reviews and an impressive 4.9/5 from more than 32,019 clients on VouchedFor.
It is, therefore, as good a time as any to join SJP.
Over the past 10 years, investing with SJP has grown the average client’s wealth by 5.2% per annum, net of all on-going fees including advice, as at end of May 2024.
Here at SJP, we start from the same investment base as every other wealth management company – looking at c. 12,000 stocks and bonds and c.130,000 funds globally. The main distinction is that we curate the best investment options, so our financial advisers do not have to.
Instead of using standard fund solutions from investment managers, we directly contract with them, providing clients with a number of benefits – including access to some of the best fund managers in the world. We select only the best external fund managers from across the globe, dedicating up to 400 hours of research per manager, before approval.
These managers are constantly monitored to ensure they meet their respective funds’ objectives, with our internal investment experts conducting over 700 monitoring meetings, annually.
We sometimes see commentators comparing our performance with others, but often these comparisons are not equitable. They often do not include the platform or advice charge in performance numbers and therefore, they are not like-for-like comparisons.
For our 2023 client survey, we received over 61,000 responses. Overall, client satisfaction continues to remain strong (82% positive), and clients advocacy remains high (79% positive).
We invest heavily in our Academy programme, demonstrating our commitment to training the next generation of financial advisers. We believe our career change programme should be accessible to all, and as such, it is totally free for delegates, with all training and exam costs covered.
We do ask for R01 and R05 to be completed prior to successful delegates joining, but these costs will be reimbursed at the end of Term 2. This training is non-repayable unless an individual leaves to join a competitor whilst in the early part of their SJP career. If this does happen, we will look to recoup some of the training costs we have incurred.
You may have seen press coverage surrounding our Business Sale and Purchase (BSP) model, facilitating sellers and buyers within our 2,500+ firms. SJP has operated a market leading BSP Scheme for over 20 years, helping Partners sell their businesses by matching buyers with sellers, and helping Partners buy businesses by providing loans at favourable rates.
With over 4,000 successful transactions since inception and more than £1.8bn of capital value realised, this is a tremendous facility for the Partnership. Critical to this model is ensuring that our lending activities are responsible, and we consider the outcomes for all stakeholders – the buying Partner, selling Partner, and their clients.
The desired outcome of the BSP Scheme is to have Partner borrowers who can capitalise on growth opportunities that require debt funding. We seek to minimise defaults wherever possible, primarily through lending responsibly at the outset.
This commitment to a well-performing loan portfolio is evidenced by our less than 0.05% write-off rate over the last 10 years, which is comparable, if not better, than retail mortgages. Subject to debt being fully repaid and transfer of client servicing relationships to a new Adviser, Partners can terminate at any time subject to a one month notice period.
FTSE 100 membership reflects a point-in-time ranking of market valuation. It’s a fluid index, and naturally, many companies move in and out of it over time. Our share price has recently decreased meaning that SJP has now fallen out of the FTSE 100 – the 100 companies with the highest market capitalisation listed on the London Stock Exchange.
The fundamentals of our business remain in great shape, and we continue to deliver excellent outcomes for nearly one million clients. We remain the largest wealth manager in the UK with 4,834 advisers and £179 billion of client funds under management, some £78bn higher than our second largest competitor. TheWealthNet – Revealed: The top 20 private asset managers by AUM (paminsight.com).
We are a growing business and continue to grow faster than our peers in the sector. In Q1 2024, we attracted £63m of new investments every day. We’ve also achieved positive net flows every quarter since Q1 2008 – 65 successive quarters. Adviser numbers also continue to increase year on year, driven by our market-leading Academy training programme for new entrants.
It’s important to place the ranking into context. As a business, we continue to focus on how we can support nearly one million people in living their lives and fulfilling the dreams they want to achieve through trusted, one to one advice and long-term relationships.
Find out more about the opportunities with St. James’s Place Financial Adviser Academy, check out their Featured Company Profile page.
You can also connect with SJP by editing your profile and updating your connect with featured companies preferences to start a conversation.
You can also read a selection of more articles from St James’s Place below: