St James's Place overhauls fee structure after regulatory pressure
Andrew Croft (pictured) is the outgoing CEO at St James's Place.
In a stock exchange notice today (17 October), the £158.6b wealth giant said the updates resulting from a review into its charging structure will result in three key changes that will apply to most of its investment wrappers.
The structure of its investment bond and pension business will change so that new business will no longer include an early withdrawal charge structure. Instead, new investment bond and pension business will operate with initial charges together with ongoing charges.
SJP will also separate its charges into their component parts: advice charges, fund charges, and product charges, allowing clients to consider the value they are receiving from each element of its services.
St James's Place under regulatory scrutiny to reform fee structure — reports
The firm said this will also help potential clients to review and compare its charges across the marketplace, and allow more relevant benchmarking of investment performance going forward.
Its charges will be rebalanced towards the value of advice, with initial product charges removed for all products, and ongoing product charges reduced and tiered for large investments.
In 2024, SJP will also introduce a «more consistent» approach to fund charges to reflect the value each fund provides. This means some charges may decrease and others increase, but the firm said that, on average, the impact on fund charges across the whole portfolio will be neutral.
The move came after the wealth manager's shares fell by over 20% on Friday (13 October) following a report by the FT that the firm was facing pressure from regulators to reform its fee model in a bid to comply with the recently introduced Consumer
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