1. managementtoday.com December 2015/January 2016 | 65
TOPINSECTOR:LIFEASSURANCE&INSURANCE
COMPANY SHOWCASE
2015
COMPANYSUMMARY
Since our establishment in 1991, we have become recognised and
respected as a trusted provider of quality advice and wealth manage-
ment services. Our clients currently entrust us to manage £54.5bn of
their investments. We are a FTSE 100 company which, through our
dedicated advisers (known as the St. James’s Place Partnership), special-
ises in the provision of wealth management advice to individuals,
trustees and businesses.
PROMOTIONANDDEVELOPMENT
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 excep-
tional 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 stu-
dents. 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.
COMPANYCULTURE
Core to our culture is the building and maintaining of long-term rela-
tionships 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 busi-
ness, both in the dedicated service we provide and in the proactive and
caring ethos shared and encouraged by everyone in our organisation.
DIVERSITYANDSOCIALRESPONSIBILITY
The growing tax burden, continuing low interest rates, 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 22 years the St. James’s Place community has
raised and distributed in excess of £40 million to good causes.
ENVIRONMENTANDSUSTAINABILITY
Despite our rapid growth, we have been able to demonstrate a contin-
ued reduction in our carbon footprint and continue to actively work
towards reducing environmental impact through the effective manage-
ment 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
extensive 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
While many other companies in the financial services industry have
withdrawn from the provision of face-to-face advice, we have continued
to attract high-quality new Partners to help clients achieve their indi-
vidual aims and secure their long-term financial objectives. Alongside
our UK operations, in 2014 we launched three offices in Asia in
Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Wealthmanagement
Website:sjp.co.uk
Headoffice:1TetburyRoad,Cirencester,GloucestershireGL71FP
Numberofemployees:2,977adviserswithintheSt.James’sPlacePartnership
and1,308employeesacrosstheUK
St.James’sPlace
WealthManagement
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