St James's place wealth management

I am another fan of them my advisor has been superb.

She's gone above and beyond with the help she has given me.

SJP are expensive, I believe they generally take 4.5% initial charge still (which is quite high in the new world). They're ongoing service, anecdotally, is very good.

I know a handful of SJP guys (and gals), and I also know a fair few SJP clients.

As far as I can tell, SJP manage to make the profits they do and charge what they do by giving 'excellent' service to their clients. Whether or not this is worth paying for depends on the individual I guess.

As an aside, although they're owned by Lloyds, I think they manage themselves as a separate entity with little interference from the master.

Personally, I'm something of a fan (although I actually work for another wealth management entity). Some of their advisers give me the creeps though...not sure I'd trust many of them with my money.

Edit: I'd add - For smaller investors, I'd say definitely steer clear. For the more wealthy who don't mind paying the higher costs in exchange for free lunches, golf days or trips out at your advisers expence, well, what ColdIron said rings true - Shopping at Harrods when you could buy at M&S.

Qwerty09 wrote: »

plus I never paid him anything until he set up my plans and then SJP paid him, which is fair enough (the IFAs wanted paying up front..!!)

To put a slightly different spin on this, he would only be financially remunerated if you boughgt one of the policies provided by his parent company and he had no ability to go off panel and suggest something else to you. Given this, do you think his advice was unbiased in comparison to someone charging you an up front fee for recommending a solution from the wider market of investments and a second fee for implementation, with both fees independent of the actual products selected?

Also, you certainly did pay him. SJP pay their partners out of the initial charges on their policies, which are adviser charges. Unit trusts and OEICs can be bought on the wider market for no initial charge, so the entire amount deducted from your contribution is the fee you are paying your adviser, in effect.

atypical wrote: »

Lloyds sold their stake in SJP in Dec 2013.

Some interesting stuff in their annual report presentation here:
http://www1.sjp.co.uk/~/media/Files/S/sjp-group/documents/Results/Analysts%20Presentation%20LR.pdf

They're 3rd biggest after Coutts and Barclays and growing fast.

On an investment of £85k they charge 3.12% if held for 3 years or 2.19% if held for 6 years which their comparison shows as low vs competition.

I can assure you that this is not cheap, especially where investments are held for 6 years or less. It's very clear that the data has been cherry picked for that table, as it only includes nine competitors out of the 200+ available to retail clients in the UK (EDIT - as listed in the PAM managers rather than all IFAs, to be clear). Additionally, many of these competitors are discretionary management firms, which would be totally unsuitable for a client with £85k to invest due to the high ratio of dealing costs to portfolio size. A more appropriate comparison would be with a typical cost of ownership of a multi manager fund or another typical way for clients to gain access to a firm's investment management expertise.

Over the page they deal with a larger portfolio, but again deal with only a very small segment of the market. They've also given up showing their 3-year charges, presumably this is because they're so unfavourable at this size.

It's also worth noting that SJP's charges are all percentage based and fixed, therefore as the amount of investment increases, their charges against many of these other companies will start to look considerably worse. Investec, for example, will start using direct equities and bonds in portfolios once you get over a certain level, and those investments have no underlying charges, bringing the costs down considerably.

In short, it's a presentation designed to make their figures look better by comparing their fees to a number of companies that aren't in the market for that sized portfolio.

grey_gym_sock wrote: »

on the other hand, if we are in a high-return environment, perhaps you'll be lucky and get 6% investment returns, in which case SJP will only be taking half the return.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, when we had a high return environment (or I was young and foolish, take your pick!) I started my PEPs and pensions with SJP. Slick partner, sharp suit, gold watch, fleet of fancy cars, here was a guy who knew about money and investing!

I don't have any regrets because my investments did well (despite SJP rather than because of them!) and I also learnt a lot of valuable lessons.

I'm now a low-fee (mostly) index investor and SJP partners are going to have to get rich by skimming the cream (and half the milk!) off someone else's pension.