Lots to read in St James’s Place 2008 Annual Statement of interest to No Monkey Business followers. Over 80,000 wealth management clients have voted for SJP with their cheque books, with an average portfolio value of £182,000. Only 14% have assets over £1m so this is not the high net worth marketplace. In middle-income middle England, costs really do count. As SJP themselves say, we are under-providing and over-reliant on property investments (instead of financial-asset holdings) for our retirement. But attaching high front-end and continuous charges to both the stock of financial assets and new assets (which the firm is still very efficient at acquiring) pushes clients away from their goal. SJP is a phenomenal success story but a bitter sweet one.
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by Stuart Fowler