St. James' Place - a review…

[simon800]

ILikeCake said:

Your investments have grown 4% per annum and that's after they've taken their 2% fee?

So in effect you've been giving a third of your gains to SJP?

Absolutely obscene

[OddCat]

simon800 said:

ILikeCake said:

Your investments have grown 4% per annum and that's after they've taken their 2% fee?

So in effect you've been giving a third of your gains to SJP?

Absolutely obscene

I can only imagine how apoplectic you'd be if someone paid some fees but had negative growth.

Good job that hasn't ever happened to anyone, ever, and that all investment portfolios always go up in value.....

[xeny]

Each basis point less I pay in fees, is another basis point of worse underlying investment returns can be before I get a negative return.

[Countdown]

xeny said:

ILikeCake said:

Over the last 7 years I'd bet most of the 'buy and forget' Vanguard tracker funds would outperform 4%. And you'd only pay 0.37% in fees

This graph top to bottom is for LS 100 -> LS 20 over the past 7 years.

https://webfund6.financialexpress.net/clients/Harg...

really emphasises how at best things have gone sideways since the end of 2021.

Apologies if I'm missing something but doesnt your chart suggest that LS100 has increased by 60% since 2017? Admittedly LS20 has stayed flat but (arguably) growth would be lower for that anyway.....

[bitchstewie]

Closer to 70%

[xeny]

Countdown said:

Apologies if I'm missing something but doesnt your chart suggest that LS100 has increased by 60% since 2017? Admittedly LS20 has stayed flat but (arguably) growth would be lower for that anyway.....

Pretty much exactly 70%. LS80 is ~50%

[Countdown]

xeny said:

Countdown said:

Apologies if I'm missing something but doesnt your chart suggest that LS100 has increased by 60% since 2017? Admittedly LS20 has stayed flat but (arguably) growth would be lower for that anyway.....

Pretty much exactly 70%. LS80 is ~50%

I'm an idiot. I misread your post as saying "things had gone sideways since 2017".

[OddCat]

Regarding fund performance, the irony is that SJP don't actually make money from the funds. Their fee structure is basically 1% product fee (which they keep), 0.5% onging advice fee (which the adviser gets) and 0.5% fund AMC (mostly to the external fund manager and cover fund operating costs). Total 2%.

They could theoretically use Vanguard passive funds at 0.1% and then charge clients a total of 1.6%, make the same money, and avoid the "poor performance" flack along with (some) of the "high charges" flack.

If the funds did better then SJP would make more money with their 1% product fee of what would be a bigger number.....

[Car bon]

OddCat said:

Regarding fund performance, the irony is that SJP don't actually make money from the funds. Their fee structure is basically 1% product fee (which they keep), 0.5% onging advice fee (which the adviser gets) and 0.5% fund AMC (mostly to the external fund manager and cover fund operating costs). Total 2%.

I'm not sure that's entirely accurate....

SJP partners with 'independent' advisors (who aren't truly independent but tied, just not employed by SJP), so it may be true that the advisor does not see the fund fees, but I'd be very surprised if SJP don't....

SJP employ external managers, but the funds are very much theirs -

https://www.sjp.co.uk/sites/sjp-corp/files/SJP/rep...

[mikey_b]

Car bon said:

Again, I'd like to see a source for that.

SJP partners with 'independent' advisors (who aren't truly independent but tied, just not employed by SJP), so it may be true that the advisor does not see the fund fees, but I'd be very surprised if SJP don't....

There some exceptions to the ‘tied’ thing. My employer has some kind of deal with them where the pension advisors we can book time with for financial advice of any kind, are from SJP wealth management (and are contactable via sjpp.co.uk email addresses) but the company pension money is with AJ Bell. I have to use the AJ Bell Investcentre app to view it, and I can see the money is spread all over loads of different funds - none of which appear to be SJP. Mostly iShares (Blackeock I think?) and Vanguard.

[ILikeCake]

There was a good blog post a few years back by a SJP advisor on the fee structure (my Google Fu can't find it). At the time the advisor was disgruntled after SJP cut back on the holiday/cruises bonuses: https://citywire.com/wealth-manager/news/sjp-advis...

The perk finished in 2019 so they probably only got a couple of cruises out of you Oddcat

On the fund managers. SJP employ external fund managers, but as far as I know we don't see the pricing/cost to them. I assume they add a margin for the end mark, i.e. they pay the fund managers 0.5% but charge the marks 1%.

[Adam.]

ILikeCake said:

On the fund managers. SJP employ external fund managers, but as far as I know we don't see the pricing/cost to them. I assume they add a margin for the end mark, i.e. they pay the fund managers 0.5% but charge the marks 1%.

Usually the fund would have to charge the investor 1% and pay the 0.5% retrocession under the table to SJP. This was banned under RDR some years ago, so you should be able to see what SJP is charging on top.

It should also be shown in the annual costs and charges summary (enforced by MIFID 2).

[IJWS15]

In the process of moving away from SJP. Used them to consolidate pensions 4 years ago.

I cited poor performance to our advisor.

He has come up with a reason why our investments didn’t do well in the first year, instead of investing everything at once they advised us to trickle the money in over a year ………. We (being new to this at the time) followed their advice which he now appears to be saying was wrong!

Haven’t pointed this out to him yet, nor have I taken issue with the seminar at which we were offered places (at his cost) when it is really funded from the charges.

Waiting for some information from Close Bros but Fisher charges seem to be in line with SJP. Close say they will discount fees as I am an employer introduction.

Starting to think I just dump everything in my live Aviva pension and put it into a tracker and save the fees.

[DoubleSix]

IJWS15 said:

In the process of moving away from SJP. Used them to consolidate pensions 4 years ago.

I cited poor performance to our advisor.

He has come up with a reason why our investments didn’t do well in the first year, instead of investing everything at once they advised us to trickle the money in over a year ………. We (being new to this at the time) followed their advice which he now appears to be saying was wrong!

Haven’t pointed this out to him yet, nor have I taken issue with the seminar at which we were offered places (at his cost) when it is really funded from the charges.

Waiting for some information from Close Bros but Fisher charges seem to be in line with SJP. Close say they will discount fees as I am an employer introduction.

Starting to think I just dump everything in my live Aviva pension and put it into a tracker and save the fees.

Sounds like you still “new to this” to be honest.

Now, im no fan of SJP, but…

Investing in tranches is a well known and commonly deployed means of mitigating risk (volatility) via averaging. I suspect you would have been given the pros and cons of the approach and opted to follow the advice at the time.

As with anything in the markets, strategies can work in your favour or against you depending on numerous uncontrollable factors. In a rising market you might wish you’d gone “all in” but in a falling market, not so much…

As with many poorly informed (amateur) investors you are simply laying the blame for an unsuccessful strategy at the advisers door, rather than accepting that market risk is yours to bear and that using an adviser is no guarantee of success.

[okgo]

He actually appears to be saying that the SJP rep is now saying the DCA approach he himself initially pushed was the wrong one and blaming the client, no?

[Dixy]

DoubleSix said:

As with many poorly informed (amateur) investors you are simply laying the blame for an unsuccessful strategy at the advisers door, rather than accepting that market risk is yours to bear and that using an adviser is no guarantee of success.

Thats right blame the punter, if it does well it is all down to the skill of the advisor if it does badly...

[DoubleSix]

okgo said:

He actually appears to be saying that the SJP rep is now saying the DCA approach he himself initially pushed was the wrong one and blaming the client, no?

I read it as the adviser explaining that a phased investment strategy has impacted performance (against a benchmark) and the client sees this as an “excuse” rather than a rational explanation.

[xeny]

My impression is that some SJP investors were happy paying high fees when returns are good as it made them feel the product was "reassuringly expensive".

Those people are rather less happy now returns are harder to come by. Suspect SJP client retention is going to come under some pressure, especially with news stories reminding those clients how much they are paying to lose money.

[Zoon]

OddCat said:

If the funds did better then SJP would make more money with their 1% product fee of what would be a bigger number.....

But they don't as they are happy taking 1% for doing terribly.

Or as my mate calls them: Scumbags Jokers Parasites

[Rushjob]

DoubleSix said:

okgo said:

He actually appears to be saying that the SJP rep is now saying the DCA approach he himself initially pushed was the wrong one and blaming the client, no?

I read it as the adviser explaining that a phased investment strategy has impacted performance (against a benchmark) and the client sees this as an “excuse” rather than a rational explanation.

What was said was "He has come up with a reason why our investments didn’t do well in the first year, instead of investing everything at once they advised us to trickle the money in over a year ………. We (being new to this at the time) followed their advice which he now appears to be saying was wrong!