Why not listen to it? Our Bonus Adviser 3.0 Podcast episode on Between a rock and St James’s Place is just here 👇

On Friday (13th October), SJP shares fell by over 20%! On a single day.

In the past 6 months, it's lost 46% of its market cap. That’s around £3bn that’s just evaporated.

Looking at SJP stock price, market analyst 😜 Ernest Hemingway quipped:

How did you lose half your market cap? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.'

The following Tuesday, SJP announced a radical overhaul of its fees!

Oh, now I finally get it: Consumer Duty is a custom-made regulation for SJP. Enforcing it on the rest of us is merely a decoy.

The entire retail investment industry is merely a pawn in this cat and mouse game between the FCA and SJP.

Let’s unpack what’s going on with, what has been until now, the UK's most formidable wealth management business.

In The Beginning…

To understand its predicament, you have to understand its roots.

Founded in 1991 as J Rothschild Assurance by South African lawyer turned financier, Sir Mark Weinburg, and his protege Mike Wilson, with the backing of Jacob Rothschild. The business adopted its current name after a reverse takeover of St James’s Place Capital in 1997, when it became a public company.

Weinberg was a serial entrepreneur, and the father of the variable premium whole life policy, who founded Abbey Life, and then Hambro Life, which later rebranded as Allied Dunbar, also affectionately known in the industry as Allied Crowbar!

Having left school with no A Levels, Wilson found his calling in life insurance sales, becoming the youngest broker consultant at Equity and Law. But what he lacked in academics, he made up for in charisma. Once he gave a speech to 2,000 sales people who ended up giving him a full ten-minute standing ovation!

So when the pair started SJP, they not only brought many of their first cohort of life insurance salesmen (and they were mostly men) from Allied Crowbar, but they also brought the culture, particularly the art of fee obfuscation that is now synonymous with SJP.

Fast forward two and half decades, SJP has become the most dominant force in UK wealth management!

And regardless of how much those of us on the independent advice side disagree, it has become the bellwether of how most people, especially regulators, politicians and the media think of financial advisers.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some things to admire, even envy about SJP.

• Its marketing prowess is the envy of the entire industry! Overall, clients seem to like what they get from SJP. 🤷🏿