St. James's Place H1 2025 Earnings Report

St. James's Place EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 52
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

St. James's Place Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

St. James's Place Announcement Details

• Quarter: H1 2025
• Date: 7/31/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, July 31, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 2:00AM ET

We plan, grow and protect the financial futures of over one million clients across the UK by providing holistic advice-led wealth management, delivered exclusively by the Partnership, our group of more than 4,900 highly skilled advisers. We offer an integrated client proposition, through which we provide financial advice, investment product wrappers such as pensions, investment bonds and ISAs, and offer our own range of investment funds and portfolios.

St. James's Place H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Our underlying cash result rose 17% to £240.4m and net inflows doubled to £3.8bn, driving record funds under management of £198.5bn.
• Neutral Sentiment: We are in the final stages of implementing our new charging structure next month, which applies charges immediately to new inflows and is expected to lower margins to 43–45bps before supporting compounding future growth.
• Positive Sentiment: Revising our ongoing service redress methodology released £84.5m pre-tax (£63.4m after tax), which the board will return to shareholders via an additional share buyback.
• Positive Sentiment: Our cost and efficiency programme has completed most of its organisational redesign and remains on track to deliver planned savings by 2027 without impacting near-term results.

Presentation

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Good morning, and welcome to our twenty twenty five half year results. It's been a very successful first half for St James's Place. We've delivered double digit earnings growth and record funds under management, all while making substantial progress on our key programs of work. This performance reflects the strength of our business model, the quality and resilience of our advisors, and the continued demand for trusted financial advice. I'm going to talk through some of the business and financial highlights, then Caroline will cover the financials in more detail.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

I'll then update you about our priorities as we look to the second half and beyond. So let's begin with the strong first half we've just delivered. It was a period where the backdrop for consumers continued to be complex and evolve. More positively, mortgage rates are coming down rather than going up, and interest rates are expected to trend lower over time. On the other hand, we've seen sluggish economic growth across major economies.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Stock markets have been volatile, consumer confidence is fragile, and geopolitical tension has been on the rise. Putting all this together, it's a tricky environment for a UK consumer. How can they plan with confidence when there's so much uncertainty? The answer for many is holistic financial advice. Delivered by a trusted, highly qualified professional financial advisor with whom they have a long relationship.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Advisors can help their clients navigate a sea of uncertainty and make sense of markets. They help them block out the noise and encourage the right long term behaviours to guide them on the way to financial freedom and flexibility. And they help their clients to stay in control of their financial affairs and remain well informed as pensions and saving landscapes shift over time. I believe it is a great time to be a financial advisor, one where they can really bring their expertise and experience to bear and add value to clients. It's against this backdrop that we've achieved a strong first half for new business.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Our advisors have been highly engaged with their clients, both in the run up to tax year end and beyond. Activity levels remain high ahead of what is seasonally a quieter summer period. During the first half we attracted £10,500,000,000 of new client investments as we sustained momentum which built across 2024. Gross inflows were higher across all wrappers and reflected an increase in both case volumes and case size compared to the 2024. Now we should be careful about reading too much into short term trends, but investment bonds have become a feature in more retirement planning conversations of late, given proposed changes to inheritance tax treatment on defined contribution pensions.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

This will have contributed to the improved flows we've seen into this wrapper. Retention remains high at 95.3% and reflects a modest improvement in surrender rates versus the same period last year. This resulted in net inflows of £3,800,000,000 for the half, double the net inflows we saw in the 2024. Achieving sustained net inflows has long been a hallmark of our business. But very important too is delivering positive long term investment returns for our clients, So while there was heightened market volatility during the first half of the year, the importance we place on building diversified investment portfolios served clients well and contributed to positive returns that compare favorably against peers.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Combining investment returns with another period of net inflows, we now manage a record £198,500,000,000 of client investments. A strong new business outturn has been mirrored in a strong financial result for the first half. We've delivered an underlying cash result of £240,400,000 which is 17% up on the prior year, notwithstanding incurring additional charge structure implementation costs this half. Caroline will walk through the detail behind the cash results shortly. So, another period of flows and financial performance that highlights the quality of our business and the fantastic service our professional advisors provide for clients.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

This puts us in excellent shape as we continue to deliver change that will set us up for sustained growth and success going forward. I'll turn now to updating you with the progress we're making on each of our major programs of work, beginning with how we're implementing simple and more comparable charges. I'm pleased to say that we are in the final stages of implementing this work. We expect the new structure to be in place within a month from today. The new charging structure will make clearer the value of our proposition, which is led through the value of personal advice that our professional advisors deliver day in and day out for clients.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

It will also help us to tell a clearer story around our investment performance for clients. Importantly, our new charging structure will enable us to unlock how we can develop our business and client proposition going forward. In the near term, this means being able to develop a new Polaris range of multi index funds that we plan to launch later this year, subject to regulatory approval. I'll talk a little bit more about Polaris Multi Index in the second part of my presentation. Returning to implementation, we have informed clients of the forthcoming changes to their charges.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

We are fine tuning and testing the final aspects of our IT infrastructure build, and the partnership are primed and ready for the change. We remain on track for delivery in line with our plans, and look forward to getting the job done. So turning to our second key programme of work, namely addressing the historic client service evidencing gaps. Back in February, we highlighted that we would take into consideration new industry guidance issued by the FCA, around ongoing financial advice services, as we progressed our work. Having engaged extensively with the FCA since then, we have now revised our approach to ongoing servicing, and therefore revised our redress methodology, bringing us into better alignment with the new industry guidance, and of course our experience from the project to date.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

This revised redress methodology has led to an £84,500,000 release from the ongoing service evidence provision. After tax, this release equates to £63,400,000 which we will be returning to shareholders in full through an additional share buyback. Caroline will provide more information on this later. We said from the outset that this is a very significant exercise that would take the best part of two to three years to complete. We look forward to accelerating progress in the second half of this year as we embed our revised approach at scale.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Our third key program of work relates to delivering our cost and efficiency program. Now this will create additional capacity to invest in our strategic initiatives and enhance operating leverage as we grow in scale. We've made good progress in this work, including completing the implementation of most of our organisational redesign. Caroline will expand on this programme and the other activities we are focusing on to achieve our planned cost savings going forward. So to summarize: it's been a strong first half for SJP, one where we've delivered excellent new business and financial results, and made further progress to position the business for sustained growth and success.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

I'll now hand over to Caroline to talk through our financial results in more detail, before I return to talk about the future.

[Caroline Waddington, CFO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to present a strong set of financials for the 2025, which you can see on the slide. I'm going to start off today by providing detail on our financial performance for the period, taking you through our cash results and the strength of our balance sheet. I'll then set out the financial impacts of our key programs that Mark spoke about earlier, and finally, I'll cover shareholder returns for the period. As usual, I'm not going to cover IFRS or EEV, but information about these metrics can be found in the appendix to the slide deck.

[Caroline Waddington, CFO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

So let's start by taking you through our cash results. This is a post tax metric, so the numbers I will quote as I take you through it are also post tax. We are pleased to have delivered an underlying cash result of £240,400,000 for the period, which is an increase of 17% on the 2024. This is despite incurring additional charge structure implementation costs compared to the same period last year. There are three key drivers of this strong result: first, an increase in average mature FUM second, an increase in margin arising from new business and third, our continued focus on cost management.

[Caroline Waddington, CFO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

So first, funds under management, which I'll refer to as FUM, has increased to a record £198,500,000,000 as at June 30. Despite market volatility, this increase drove average mature FUM up 13% on the same period last year and resulted in net income from FUM also being up 13% at £366,100,000 This result is within our guidance range of 54 to 56 basis points on mature FUM, excluding Asia and DFM. For those of you who are less familiar with our financial business model, when I refer to mature FUM, what I mean is the portion of our total firm which is subject to annual product management charges. These charges are our key profit driver, but under our current charging structure they are not taken for the first six years after investment for most investment bond and pensions business. Whilst this FUM is in its first six years with us, we refer to it as 'gestation FUM'.

[Caroline Waddington, CFO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Gestation FUM does not yet contribute to the net income from FUM Line in the cash result. However, as we have high levels of retention, we know that the vast majority of it will stay with us for the long term, which provides a high degree of visibility over future growth in income. To bring this to life, once the £51,100,000,000 of gestation fund at thirtieth of June is fully mature by 02/1931, it could contribute in the region of £300,000,000 of additional income to the cash result every year, And this is without incurring any additional costs. From the point our new charging structure is in place, we will benefit from all charges applying from the day that a new investment is made. We will not have to wait six years for new investment bond and pension business to contribute recurring income to the cash result.

[Caroline Waddington, CFO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

This means there will be no new inflows to the gestation fund balance post implementation. As previously guided, we expect the margin we earn on mature fund to reduce to forty three forty five basis points under our new charging structure. As usual, you can find a summary of all our guidance in the appendix to the slide deck, which also contains a reminder of what our new charging structure will look like. Whilst the margin range will reduce upon implementation, it will apply to an increasing proportion of FUM over time. This is because all new business under the new structure will immediately flow into mature FUM, and the remaining gestation fund will mature over the next six years.

[Caroline Waddington, CFO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Together, these dynamics build a powerful picture of how our income can develop and compound in the medium term. As already guided, following the expected dip in profitability post implementation in 2025 and 2026, we anticipate that the cash result will accelerate from 2027 onwards. This supports our ambition to double the underlying cash result from 2023 to 02/1930. The second key driver behind our strong underlying cash results is the margin arising from new business. This has increased by 40 to £75,400,000 and it represents the initial charges on new business less the payment of directly associated costs such as initial advice fees paid to partners and third party administration costs.

[Caroline Waddington, CFO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

The margin increase is predominantly driven by higher new business period on period. As a reminder, this lie in our cash result will be negligible following the implementation of our new charging structure, as initial product charges are removed. Again, this is in line with the previous guidance. Third and finally, we've continued our focus on cost management. For the first half, controllable expenses have increased by 7% on the same period last year to £155,000,000 But it's important to note that this is due to phasing of expenses between the first and second half of the year only.

[Caroline Waddington, CFO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Our guidance to contain growth in controllable expenses to 5% for the full year remains. Our underlying cash result excludes items which are one off in nature and so it excludes the £63,400,000 post tax release from the ongoing service evidence provision following the implementation of our revised redress methodology. This is included in our cash result, which was £299,200,000 for the period. As the creation of the provision was a key driver in reducing returns to shareholders, the Board has decided that the £63,400,000 release will be returned to shareholders in full via a share buyback program. Our remaining ongoing service evidence provision stands at £320,000,000 at the June.

[Caroline Waddington, CFO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

More information on the other lines within our cash result can be found in the appendix. I'll now take you through the strength of our balance sheet. As we said before, we hold assets to fully match our liabilities to clients, and we take a prudent approach to investing shareholder funds. This results in a resilient capital position capable of meeting liabilities even during adverse market conditions. The key risk for our business is operational.

[Caroline Waddington, CFO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

To keep things simple, we choose to manage capital by holding a management solvency buffer, or MSB, on top of the assets we hold to match client liabilities. Of course, we also ensure the capital we hold under this method meets the requirements of the Solvency II regime. At June 30, our MSB was £575,900,000 and we held shareholder net assets over and above the value of our MSB of £966,300,000 Most of this reflects investment to support the business and is relatively illiquid in nature, such as business loans to partners and the operational readiness prepayment asset. We run the group in a capital efficient manner and return excess capital to shareholders, subject to having liquidity and IFRS retained earnings capacity. The Group operates with substantial liquid balances, but it's worth noting that much of this is already set aside for working capital requirements, including policyholder tax, funding for the ongoing service evidence provision and to cover our MSB.

[Caroline Waddington, CFO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Moving on to our key programmes of work, I've already covered the financial aspects of our historic ongoing service evidence review, so now I'll cover the other two, starting with our new charging structure. Implementation costs for this significant project were £38,100,000 post tax in the first half, bringing the total spend recognized across the project to date to £104,800,000 As we near implementation towards the August, we are confident the overall cost of the programme will be in line with the guidance we gave in February, which is towards the upper end of our original guidance range of £105,000,000 to £120,000,000 post tax. The remaining implementation costs will be recognised in the second half of the year, with no further costs to come in 2026. Our cost and efficiency programme is progressing well, and we're on track to deliver it by 2027 as planned. The organisational redesign, which Mark spoke about earlier, is a significant project in itself, involving mapping out how we should be organised across the business to align to our strategic priorities and drive future growth.

[Caroline Waddington, CFO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

We've completed most of the work to implement the new design and made headway in a number of other areas. These include optimising our commercial relationships with suppliers and rationalising our property footprint. We expect to deliver the programme in line with the guidance we provided this time last year. As expected, the programme has had no material impact on our half year 2025 results, as costs to achieve and reinvestment spend have broadly offset the savings we've made during the period. We anticipate this will remain the case for the full year 2025 and 2026, again in line with previous guidance.

[Caroline Waddington, CFO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Finally, I'm going to cover shareholder returns, which are a key component in our capital allocation framework, which is included in the appendix. Under our current guidance, which covers the financial years 2025 and 2026, We expect to return 50% of the full year underlying cash result to shareholders. This is structured as 18p per share in annual dividends, with the balance distributed through share buybacks. For 2025, the board has declared an interim dividend of 6p per share, which equates to £32,100,000 and an interim share buyback of the same amount. In addition to this interim share buyback, as I set out earlier, we'll also be buying back £63,400,000 of shares as we return the post tax amount released from our ongoing service evidence provision to shareholders.

[Caroline Waddington, CFO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Together, this means the total buyback, which will commence in August, will be £95,500,000 And so, to conclude, as I said at the outset, we've delivered strong financial results for the 2025, with our underlying cash result growing by 17% on the same period last year. Whilst our new charging structure will drive the expected dip in profitability for the remainder of 2025 and 2026 after it's implemented, we have a high degree of visibility in compounding earnings going forward. This gives us confidence in our ambition to double the underlying cash result from 2023 to 02/1930. With that, I'll hand back to Mark.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Thank you, Caroline, for walking us through another strong financial outcome. In a moment, I will talk about our near term priorities, but before I do that, I want to restate the opportunity for great financial advice led businesses. You have heard us talk about the £3,300,000,000,000 in liquid investable assets in The UK, and how the scale of this addressable market is set to grow. But there's increasing recognition that much of this collective wealth is not working hard enough for consumers. The FCA recently estimated that over 7,000,000 people hold more than £10,000 in cash.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Now, holding cash is no bad thing. A rainy day fund is the cornerstone of any sound financial plan. But the real question is: are people saving too much and investing too little? The need to address this is urgent. According to Scottish widows, 38% of people aren't on track for even a minimum retirement lifestyle.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

Our own research shows that nearly one in five expect to rely solely on the state pension. Those are stark statistics. And this is where trusted financial advice makes a meaningful difference, helping clients build long term plans, navigate uncertainty, and crucially, giving them the confidence to invest. Now it's telling that nearly half those with a financial plan prioritise retirement savings each month, compared to just a quarter of those without. That's the value of advice and why over 1,000,000 clients have chosen SJP.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

But holistic financial advice is about far more than investment returns. It's about maximising tax efficiency, instilling positive investment behaviours and navigating the complexity of intergenerational wealth planning. And just as importantly, it provides peace of mind, confidence and long term relationships built on trust. But we recognise that full financial advice won't be right for everyone. Those with simpler financial needs or lower investable wealth may need different support.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

So that's why we back initiatives that help all consumers make better financial decisions, from the FCA's advice guidance boundary review to the Investment Association led campaign to promote retail investing. As The UK's largest wealth management and financial advice business, we're committed to shaping a marketplace where consumers have greater control and confidence in their financial lives. Beyond delivering good outcomes for our clients, our right to win is dependent on delivering on the strategic ambitions we have already set out. As I highlighted this time last year, this means we must first strengthen our foundations so we have the right basis from which we can then amplify and fully capitalise on the exciting market opportunity ahead. Making progress against our three key programmes therefore remains a key near term priority.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

I want these programmes completed and in the rearview mirror so we can move forward with pace and purpose. We must continue to deliver on the strategy we set out a year ago. At this stage, this is mainly about strengthening our business, so in the second half of this year, we plan to build on our work around simplification and standardisation, particularly around administration linked to advice processes and new business submission. Some of this will be exploring tactical improvements. For example, we are considering how we can automate processes to create ongoing advice suitability letters to improve service and free up adviser time.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

The scope of some of this work to simplify and standardise could be transformational for some of our processes, for example in reviewing and enhancing our business submission and our approach to payments. Where we can, we will also press ahead and accelerate some of our work for the Amplify phase. Now, I spoke earlier about the launch of Polaris Multi Index, which is planned for late twenty twenty five, subject to regulatory approval. This is an initiative I'm really excited about, as this will leverage our expertise in active asset allocation while giving clients access to index tracking funds. This will add further choice for our clients and provide us with the opportunity to manage pockets of wealth that might be set outside of SJP today.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

We'll provide more detail on this once we have regulatory approval. I look forward to talking about the other aspects of our Amplify agenda at the time of our full year results in February. Arguably, the most important priority is to keep focus on delivering to the level of service that clients and our advisors expect from us. This means we must keep doing things like ensuring that our Academy programme remains best in class for those who want to become professional, highly qualified financial advisors. It means working to support the partnership with a market leading advisor proposition.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

And it means working hard to deliver great client experiences day in and day out, supporting the realisation of clients' financial aspirations, and helping our advisors to grow and develop their businesses further. So to summarise, the 2025 has been a very successful period for the business. We've delivered strong new business flows, record funds under management and double digit earnings growth. And we're setting SJP up for sustained growth and success. The changes we're making will ensure we are best placed to continue to capitalise on the compelling market opportunity in UK wealth management, where the demand and need for financial advice is growing.

[Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director at St. James's Place]

We are the scale operator and the home of financial advice in The UK. We are privileged that over 1,000,000 clients are already securing their long term financial futures through the power of SJPs professional advisors, and we're driven by a desire to help more people achieve this. We've got a proven track record of delivering growth through all stages of the market cycle, And we expect to see this translate to strong compound earnings growth as we achieve scale operating leverage. As we continue to invest in our capabilities and adapt to an evolving market environment, we remain confident in our ability to deliver sustainable returns and create long term value for shareholders. Thank you for listening, and do please tune in for our live Q and A, which will kick off at 8AM.

Participants

Executives

• Mark FitzPatrick, CEO & Executive Director
• Caroline Waddington, CFO & Executive Director