A "strong year" - and more growth to come!
Still dealing with criticism from the FCA, and in a year in which it announced plans to lay off 500 staff, St James’s Place has revealed it has grown again - and acquired its millionth customer.
Dear reader,
Welcome to our Thursday edition. Not a full edition like Monday and Friday, but one where we pick an article we hope you find valuable and focus on that - rather than post you a list of every story or press release we can find.
So, today we focus in on Gloucestershire’s biggest firm by turnover, the Cotswold-based wealth management firm St James’s Place.
Why is it important? We think that like many major firms its fortunes provide plenty of talking points - many more than we cover off or point to here.
You may have seen its annual results elsewhere, but those are just the numbers. We think a number of other angles are of interest. Most obviously, that it has been able to so ably take on board the criticism of the Financial Conduct Authority over how it gave and charged for advice and weather any collateral.
As we touch on in the article, it is not like it has not both paid a heavy price. It has, noth in having to compensate customers, but also in terms of the ongoing investment and reform of its systems and processes.
Perhaps ironically, it is because of the advice-led model on which its business is built, it has been able to do achieve so much despite everything.
It seems the amount of money being accumulated here in the UK that people call ‘liquid’ - that makes up the savings and investment market - is estimated at several trillion pounds and growing.
And as the pensions savings and investment markets continue to change and become more complicated for most of us, good, ongoing advice is a strong sell.
The caveat being, of course, that firms that deliver such advice are there only for those with a substantial amount of money to invest. By its own admission, St James’s Place is focused on those individuals - and they will grow richer as a result.
The story is one of our Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire series, which is sponsored by Randall & Payne accountants and sees us follow the financial fortunes of the county’s biggest firms by turnover and is featured in our Reports and Deals channel.
We’ve also thrown in another short read too, in the hope it helps a charity close to the hearts of many here in Gloucestershire. You can read both stories below.
Oh, and we’ve kept the paywall off today. Regular readers will know we sometimes paywall our Thursday edition and often drop a paywall over the main big read on our Friday edition too. It’s how we help make what we do sustainable (Monday’s is always entirely open to all).
But today, no paywall! We’ve had a flurry of new subscribers and want to make them feel at home.
Enjoy.
Andrew Merrell (editor).
If you have a story, an issue, a news item, a charity or an interview you want us to write about or investigate, challenge the powers that be about, then please email me: andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk.
NB: We believe Raikes now publishes probably the best-read business-related email ‘newsletter’, pound for pound, in Gloucestershire. Readership is growing and 2025 looks good!
Black & White Ball – A Night of Glamour and Giving
We featured this on on Monday, but run it again today because the charity staging the event has just informed us the deadline to buy tickets is Saturday! The event is the Longfield Community Hospice’s Black & White Ball - a hugely important fundraiser for the work it does. It’s your chance to help support the hospice care in the home provided across the county by the Minchinhampton-based charity, while also getting dressed up and having a damn good evening out. Due to take place at De Vere Cotswold Waterpark Hotel on Saturday, 29 March 2025, complete with “a three-course meal, live entertainment, and a stylish black-tie atmosphere”. Every ticket bought will help provide services from hospice at home to wellbeing services, counselling, and bereavement support.
Find out more and get your tickets here.
* The Raikes Journal is a community interest company. Everything you read by us is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People and Randall & Payne, our sponsors Hartpury University and Hartpury College, our Founding Members and wonderful paying subscribers.
If you subscribe and invite friends to The Raike Journal you will earn rewards towards complimentary membership (three referrals will get you one month, 10 will get you three months, and 25 will win you six months).
If you upgrade to paid you’ll be part of this CIC too. We are dedicated to delivering quality journalism for Gloucestershire, to championing the county, in particular its businesses, charities, education and training providers, and to helping create an even stronger community. If you upgrade to paid you will be able to see past the paywalls often put on our second and third email editions of the week, that lock all our archive after two weeks and lock our rolling Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire series. You will be able to comment on our stories too. You’ll be helping make this CIC sustainable to deliver more original articles on our county.
You can sign up to receive your two extra editions a week and see past all our paywalls for just £2.30 a week - or £1.80 a week if two or more people sign up at once. Or go all in and become one of our Founding Partners or Founding Members!
A "strong year" - and more growth to come!
Still dealing with criticism from the FCA, and in a year in which it announced plans to lay off 500 staff, St James’s Place has revealed it has grown again - and acquired its millionth customer.
By Andrew Merrell
As it continues to look closely at itself following a period of high profile criticism from the Financial Conduct Authority, wealth management firm St James’s Place has revealed a record year - passing the one million customer mark.
And it’s predicting more growth to come.
In its previous annual report the boss of Gloucestershire’s biggest firm by turnover acknowledged how serious that FC
A criticism was, by setting aside £426 million for potential client refunds to address issues over how it charged for advice.
Even as recently as January the Financial Ombudsman Service was upholding a complaint against SJP Wealth Management for failing to provide adequate financial advice to a client over several years.
That followed the devastating news it announced just before Christmas, in December 2024 - news it is still working through with its 3,200 UK staff - that it expects make up to 500 of them redundant as it seeks to save £500 million by 2030 (you can read that story here).
But now the mood is changing. In its latest annual report for the year to 31 December 2024 (published today) it is the bearer of good news - there is a new record for funds under management and prediction of more growth to come too.
That growth, it said, is being driven by an increasing need for what has so far been a theme of this article – good advice.
“We are living in a world of acute complexity and uncertainty – whether this be geopolitics, market volatility or changes to pensions and savings rules and taxes,” said Mark FitzPatrick, the St James’s Place chief executive officer.
“People need advice and they need advice from people they trust. This is what the SJP Partnership does.”
According to the firm the UK alone has an estimated £3.3 trillion and growing of funds in savings or investments with that amount expected to increase by around seven per cent per annum compound to 2030.
While that need for good advice applies to everyone of us, the firm’s business model is naturally focused on one elite segment of the UK population.
“The higher wealth segments are expected to grow more quickly than this. This is a growth market, and we are focused on the main growth segments,” said FitzPartick.
He called the last 12 months “a year of strong business and financial performance”, with funds under management increasing by 13 per cent to £190 billion in the last financial year.
And the Cirencester-headquartered firm, which also has 4,500 advisor businesses operating as partners nationwide, now has a record number of clients too - more than one million.
“Momentum in the business built as the year unfolded, with sustained net inflows and strong investment returns leading to record funds under management of £190.2 billion,” said FitzPatrick.
“This underpinned an underlying cash result of £447.2 million, an improvement of 14 per cent on 2023 despite the short-term costs incurred during 2024 as we progress with the implementation of our simple, comparable charging structure.
“In 2024, despite a mixed environment for UK consumers, we grew our client base and they entrusted us with £18.4 billion of new investments, which is 20 per cent higher than in 2023.
“Even with pressures on household finances and a bumpy macro environment, individuals still need to save and invest for the future.”
Nevertheless, such is the scale of the ongoing reforms to its systems, processes and investments in IT that the firm expects “a dip in profitability in 2025 and 2026” as it transitions to its “new charging model”.
But FitzPartick stressed it was the right thing to do and would make clients “better equipped to compare our charges with other providers and understand the enhanced value we believe we provide.
“This could also open more of the market to us”.
The business, he said, was looking at a “powerful picture of income growth”.