St. James's Place - can I do better?

Wildsound wrote: »

Honestly, I don't know how these SJP cowboys manage to continue to get away with what they are doing in today's world... With investment management at my own core, I actually cry a little inside when I hear someone has fallen for their sales pitch.

I did a fair bit of research into their "funds" about a year ago, and found that out of their entire pool of funds, there was only 1 fund that came close to average/good and was putting in a reasonable stint at outperforming the sector average (I believe it was one of the international equity funds). The rest were utter dog and didn't deserve a look in. So once I factored in this with the jaw dropping "entrance and exit fees", I concluded that I would never even give them a look in.

I have just done a 10 minute stint on trustnet (so not overly reliable time, but if you are wanting to consider using SJP with a lot of money, I would consider you spend a day at the weekend or so figuring out how to use trustnet and then start comparing the SJP funds to their peer group funds) - I was shocked at how eye-wateringly bad their funds are compared to some of their well known peers.

The funds sector of the ones I have gone into all seem to be listed as "unclassfied" and so don't show a comparison graph, but if you find another fund (e.g. Fidelity Emerging Markets), find out the sector (i.e. IA emerging markets) and then compare the performance of the "unclassfied" SJP Global Emerging fund, you can then make your own conclusions.

I would be interested to see if anyone can find a fund that you can honestly say, hand on heart, would actually be a contender to something you would pick in a DIY world?

As previously mentioned, my understanding is that their funds are net of all costs, including advice, platform and administration. You'd also need to be careful which funds you are looking at - I think a lot of them on Trustnet are life funds, don't think the UT and pension equivalents are on there.

I concur with Sabby049.
My SJP adviser offered me:
no up front charges
Usual exit fee everyone has been complaining about but waived if taking my 25% tax free withdrawal from my pension. The rest of my cash will be in there for at least 6 years.
1.0% platform fee pa
Circa 0.5% fund fee depending on what it is invested in
0.2% commission to my adviser
Total = 1.7%
Total fund value circa £3m

Abspmcn wrote: »

I concur with Sabby049.
My SJP adviser offered me:
no up front charges
Usual exit fee everyone has been complaining about but waived if taking my 25% tax free withdrawal from my pension. The rest of my cash will be in there for at least 6 years.
1.0% platform fee pa
Circa 0.5% fund fee depending on what it is invested in
0.2% commission to my adviser
Total = 1.7%
Total fund value circa £3m

SJP don't have a platform. They use old style products. IFA platforms are around 0.2x% nowadays.

SJP are notorious for quoting AMC when they should be using OCF. Very few of their funds are less than 1%. For example, the Cont European fund has an AMC of 1.35% but OCF of 1.78%.

For a fund value of 3m, you could be on an IFA platform with a platform charge of 0.04% (in the budget range or 0.1% (in the quality range). Fund charges around 0.4% OCF (not AMC) and IFA charge around 0.25% (as that value would likely see the tiering lower). So, around 0.75% bottom line compared to 1.7% for SJP. You are paying around £30,000 a year more for your SJP sales rep than a typical IFA.

Have SJP launched a (painfully amateurish) new sock puppet advertising campaign?

If you don't have a platform but call your product a platform then it is not actually a platform.

I do not want to argue. He called it a platform charge. I do not even know what a platform is and I do not mind what anyone calls it. All I know is that the charge he quoted was1% for this plus 0.2% commission for the adviser plus costs associated with funds purchased (ranging from 0.1 to 1.2%).

I am not arguing in favour of or against SJP. I am merely sharing my personal costs information. I do not know if I am getting fair value or being ripped off, hence why I have been reading this thread.

My SJP adviser does a thorough job at my annual review. He makes plenty of sensible suggestions which may have nothing to do with any investments held at SJP. I am in the fortunate position of having a very large pension, well funded ISAs and unit trust funds, owning a small property portfolio and owning 2 very successful and profitable businesses. Lucky me, but this is not my point. My personal financial situation is consequently quite complicated and there is a lot of money at stake so I do value the well rounded suggestions made by SJP. Is it worth 1.2% over and above what it would cost me to self invest? I do not know is the honest answer but I do get advise unrelated to my SJP investments.

The data SJP presented to me suggests that nearly all of their funds (and all of the ones I am invested in) outperformed an index of comparable funds over 10, 5, 3 and 1 year. I need to get a better understanding of these comparables because on this forum most people seem to be suggesting SJP funds underperform. The performance data presented by SJP is always after costs, which always needs to be born in mind.

Like everyone else, I hate the idea of being ripped off. I do not want to DIY because I am too busy so what more cost effective solutions are there for a fully managed service? I have £3m invested in pensions and £1m is ISAs and funds.