St James Place

katejo

Malthusian said:

katejo said:

So how did you move away from them without losing money? 

Quite possibly he didn't - but if you don't pay the exit charge, you pay anyway by paying SJP's eye-watering fees for a longer period, so they have you coming or going. 
You can take the view that paying the exit charge is not "losing money" if you make it back via lower charges.

You say 'better value elsewhere' but where?

Almost any IFA will offer a better service (independent advice rather than tied advice) with lower charges. Even non-SJP tied salesmen have a good chance of offering the same service for lower charges.

According to this review, the exit fees only appear to apply to pensions which I don't have with SJP  St James’s Place review: is it any good? (2023) - Nuts About Money

ColdIron

That's right, the tiered exit charges only apply to pensions, it is their way of recouping charges for the advice that you received should you exit early. An IFA would make an explicit advice charge up front

As I understand it, for non pension unit trusts they recoup their advice charges by imposing an initial charge, typically 5%, rather than an explicit fee

Advice has a value so will carry a charge, but many would argue that an explicit charge is more transparent than bundling them with wider fund fees

dunstonh

katejo said:

Malthusian said:

katejo said:

So how did you move away from them without losing money? 

Quite possibly he didn't - but if you don't pay the exit charge, you pay anyway by paying SJP's eye-watering fees for a longer period, so they have you coming or going. 
You can take the view that paying the exit charge is not "losing money" if you make it back via lower charges.

You say 'better value elsewhere' but where?

Almost any IFA will offer a better service (independent advice rather than tied advice) with lower charges. Even non-SJP tied salesmen have a good chance of offering the same service for lower charges.

According to this review, the exit fees only appear to apply to pensions which I don't have with SJP  St James’s Place review: is it any good? (2023) - Nuts About Money

I believe their investment bonds do too and they have a habit of putting people in those

katejo

dunstonh said:

katejo said:

Malthusian said:

katejo said:

So how did you move away from them without losing money? 

Quite possibly he didn't - but if you don't pay the exit charge, you pay anyway by paying SJP's eye-watering fees for a longer period, so they have you coming or going. 
You can take the view that paying the exit charge is not "losing money" if you make it back via lower charges.

You say 'better value elsewhere' but where?

Almost any IFA will offer a better service (independent advice rather than tied advice) with lower charges. Even non-SJP tied salesmen have a good chance of offering the same service for lower charges.

According to this review, the exit fees only appear to apply to pensions which I don't have with SJP  St James’s Place review: is it any good? (2023) - Nuts About Money

I believe their investment bonds do too and they have a habit of putting people in those

I only have a Unit trust and an ISA.

badger09

katejo said:

dunstonh said:

katejo said:

Malthusian said:

katejo said:

So how did you move away from them without losing money? 

Quite possibly he didn't - but if you don't pay the exit charge, you pay anyway by paying SJP's eye-watering fees for a longer period, so they have you coming or going. 
You can take the view that paying the exit charge is not "losing money" if you make it back via lower charges.

You say 'better value elsewhere' but where?

Almost any IFA will offer a better service (independent advice rather than tied advice) with lower charges. Even non-SJP tied salesmen have a good chance of offering the same service for lower charges.

According to this review, the exit fees only appear to apply to pensions which I don't have with SJP  St James’s Place review: is it any good? (2023) - Nuts About Money

I believe their investment bonds do too and they have a habit of putting people in those

I only have a Unit trust and an ISA.

Hmmm. And what investments do you hold in your ISA?

An ISA is just a tax efficient wrapper. It’s what’s inside the wrapper that matters. 

solidpro

My story is that I was with an IFA (recommended by a friend) who couldn't be bothered to reply to my emails and certainly never did anything proactive with my private pension. It made sweet-FA at exactly the time it should have been making 10%. It just didn't mean much to him, despite perhaps my prospects at future investing. So I asked around again and someone recommended an IFA who had just helped him negotiate a complex situation. This IFA is what I would agree was in 'twilight years' of work and had just switched from being IFA to SJP partner. He was completely up front and explained to us very honestly about the fact he was not independant and only sold one thing now. I understood the change but didn't know anything about SJP at the time.

This was about 5 years ago and we felt naive to the whole idea of deciding what to do with our money. I'm aware of the 6 year escape penalty thing and we did know they were (more) expensive before signing away the pension transfer to them. At the time it wasn't an extreme amount of money (upper 5-figures) and we decided we would use SJP and see how it went for 6 years. I think the main benefit we felt is that it wasn't a huge sum of money and we'd been ignored because it wasn't enough for the previous guy. This guy seemed like he was interested in us, our plans - although that could have been because of our mutual friend or it could just be because he was trying to build SJP revenue, it felt genuine.

Over the last 5 years, our confidence has grown and whilst have have modestly added to our SJP funds, we were assured that this didn't reset the initial 6 year clock (although I have to keep checking that each time because I felt it hard to believe that when we top up our pension funds it doesn't have it's own clock), and have, on our own, invested in both ISAs and SIPPs directly using passive funds with HL and VG. I felt that whilst all our investements are similar (high equity, low bonds, no property, largely US but with a significant portion in EU, UK, Japan and small Asia), the fact each 'fund' was diversified through different companies offered some small protection against any one encountering issues.

Our situation isn't exactly clean cut - I'm divorced and with a long time partner, but not remarried. I have 2 children. We run 2 Ltd companies, and therefore our income is not simply PAYE. So someone who wasn't 'just anyone online', who had a career talking 'tax wrappers' and planning was helpful, despite being tainted by 'the man' at SJP.

I think we've had some (slightly expensive) good advice which backed up a lot of our own conclusions over the years has given us confidence to know what we're doing. We generally have a 90 minute conversation, in person, at least once a year and although he does tend to blind us with statistics, we do feel like we have sounded out some of our 'research' which we might have read on this forum, seen in the news or elsewhere online. He has also certainly been a good teacher in holding fast, not making rash decisions, time-in-the-market, etc.

Our plan is to review how everything has performed over these bumpy 7 years in the UK, at the 6 year marker and we may simply leave 1 pot with SJP and only add to the rest or we might move it hopefully at no additional cost. I'll likely go and have a chat with a real IFA in a year's time and get them to come up with some alternatives.

I think in conclusion, if the SJP rep *doesn't* appear to be inexperienced, is happy to see you, be a sounding board or reply when you need advice, *doesn't* appear to be spending all your money on hot tubs and you are a bit wary at what you're doing then I think you could do worse. Like just watch advice on youtube, for example.

We also pay slightly over the odds for our accountant and I feel the benefit of that is they're completely honest, completely conservative, completely on-the-level, always the same person and don't charge me every time I send a fairly random query his way is worth it. Especially as now I can sound these two experienced opinions against each other and 'the internet' and come to a rapid decision.

UncleK

I hope people consider this related - and apologies if it's been seen before - but has anyone see this lot who appear to be happy to go after SJP - claims.amklegal.co.uk. Presumably they are spending money advertising because there's a market out there........trustpilot doesn't seem happy with them though - probably better sticking with SJP!

dunstonh

UncleK said:

I hope people consider this related - and apologies if it's been seen before - but has anyone see this lot who appear to be happy to go after SJP - claims.amklegal.co.uk. Presumably they are spending money advertising because there's a market out there........trustpilot doesn't seem happy with them though - probably better sticking with SJP!

SJP are expensive but there are no rules against that.   I sometimes think they utilise more complicated options on purpose (such as offshore bonds when one isn't really needed) but they are not doing anything wrong that would require a claims company to target them.

And the alternatives to SJP are using an IFA or DIY.    

Malthusian

UncleK said:

I hope people consider this related - and apologies if it's been seen before - but has anyone see this lot who appear to be happy to go after SJP - claims.amklegal.co.uk. 

Half any compensation (40% + VAT) in exchange for sending a templated letter and reducing your odds of success compared to making the complaint direct. Talk about jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

Mothman

I thought with SJP pensions the sliding 6yr withdrawal penalty applies to any new pension contributions from the date they are added and just from when the pension was first opened, or have I misunderstood?