On 22 September, The Sunday Times published a story entitled “SJP charges more for near-identical funds”. The story includes analysis from Morningstar and Candid Financial Advice, a small independent financial adviser, based in Thame, Oxfordshire. We believe the story is fundamentally flawed.
A spokesperson for St. James’s Place said: “Numerous independent studies consistently show that access to quality ongoing advice makes a considerable difference to an individual’s future financial health and financial confidence, but the analysis seeks to downplay this using invalid data that compares the level of fees for advice once every five years versus the fees for ongoing advice from our Partners every single year. As the basis of the analysis is fundamentally flawed this also impacts the performance story presented as the total costs of the other advice models, including ongoing advice and platform fees, are not being factored in properly and the different expected returns from the funds are ignored. Clearly, this is not a like-for-like comparison and is hugely misleading to the end client. As an industry, we need to stand up for the value quality ongoing advice is proven to deliver whether that is through an SJP Partner, an IFA, or another quality advice route.
“The St. James’s Place investment approach is distinct and brings key benefits to clients. Access to the best managers around the globe – many unique to our clients and UK retail investors – real diversity across investment approaches; and institutional oversight and protection.
“We monitor the managers and their portfolios to ensure they maintain the agreed standards and can change managers at short notice if required without any charges, tax, or inconvenience to our clients. A key example of this is our recent action to change the manager of the SJP UK High Income fund replacing Woodford Investment Management without any suspension of our fund. It is wholly inappropriate to compare the underlying SJP funds with seemingly similar funds run by the same fund managers, as the SJP funds are run to specific mandates that we control with important differences which allow us to improve diversification and manage risk more effectively for the benefit of our clients at the overall portfolio level. The examples used in this list include two funds that are not available in Sterling and would expose the investors to the currency risk of investing in US Dollars.”