Website: sjp.co.uk
Head office: 1 Tetbury Road, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 1FP
Number of employees: 3,259 advisers within the St. James's Place Partnership and 1,445 employees across the UK
Company summary
St. James's Place is a FTSE 100 company that provides highly personalised face-to-face wealth management advice, investment management and related services to individuals, trustees and businesses. Established as one of the UK's leading wealth management organisations, with geographical reach extending to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore, we have over £71bn of client funds under management. Our dedicated advice service is delivered to clients through our expert advisers, known collectively as the St. James's Place Partnership - so called because of the way they work in partnership with clients.
Promotion and development
We offer a unique opportunity for experienced financial advisers to join the St. James's Place Partnership. For City professionals or people with a non-finance background, the St. James's Place Academy offers exceptional individuals the opportunity to join us via our training and development programme. Our Gloucestershire-based headquarters and network of administration offices offer a wide range of positions, from marketing and IT to asset management and technical support, as well as internships for both A-level and university undergraduate students. We have gone on to create an apprenticeship scheme, and more recently a graduate programme, to introduce young people with new ideas and skills into our company; and to provide them with numerous routes for development and progression across all areas of our business.
Company culture
Core to our culture is the building and maintaining of long-term relationships with our clients. These relationships endure because they are founded on mutual respect and trust. Most clients stay with their Partner indefinitely, appreciating a source of trusted advice as their financial needs evolve over the years. We are very much a people business, both in the dedicated service we provide and in the proactive and caring ethos shared and encouraged by everyone in our organisation.
Diversity and social responsibility
The growing tax burden, continuing low interest rates, Brexit uncertainty, new pension freedoms and increasing life expectancy all add to the need for people to seek advice regarding their long-term financial future. Therefore, our strategy of focusing on the provision of trusted face-to-face advice has a very strong role to play in future wealth management provision. We have also continued to broaden the range of investment funds available to our clients by selecting some of the best fund managers from around the world. In addition we operate the St. James's Place Foundation, which donates to charities large and small from the fundraising and donations of our Partners and employees, matched pound for pound by the company. Over the last 23 years, the St. James's Place community has raised and distributed in excess of £50 million to good causes.
Environment and sustainability
Despite our rapid growth, we have been able to demonstrate a continued reduction in our carbon footprint and continue to actively work towards reducing environmental impact through the effective management of our energy systems.
Innovation
At the heart of the proposition to clients is our distinctive approach to investment management. We seek to find the very best investment managers from across the globe. Through our Investment Committee - aided by a number of independent external consultancies that provide research into the investment management universe - we select, monitor and, if necessary, change the fund managers in charge of our clients' funds. Once invested, clients tend to stay invested - we have a client retention rate of 95%.
Opportunities
The financial demands on our core clients, those aged 45 and above, are changing quite quickly. They or their parents are living longer or expect to do so and that is changing the nature of financial planning for, at and in retirement. At the same time, they increasingly want to support their children and grandchildren in education or in purchasing property. Our business is also about supporting our Partners and helping clients with these challenges and opportunities. Earlier this year, alongside the launch of a Power of Attorney service, we introduced an intergenerational mortgage range in association with Metro Bank. We have further initiatives planned including an intergenerational gifting service, family and general insurance protection products to complete our existing family health insurance and the development of later life planning services.
