Client satisfaction, employee engagement and adviser retention all dropped for wealth manager St James’s Place in 2025.
Client satisfaction levels dropped to 79% in 2025 in comparison to 82% in 2024, and a large drop from the 94% reported in 2021, according to SJP’s 2025 annual report released this week.
Clients also reported a drop in their views of value for money to 65% (2024: 68%), a drop of almost 20% since 2021 (2021: 83%).
Client advocacy also continued to drop to 77% (2023: 79%, 2021: 90%). These client satisfaction/advocacy figures are based on SJP’s client survey which had 19,300 respondents in 2025.
Employee engagement also fell, to 66%, a fall of 6% year-on-year (2024: 72%).
The wealth manager’s employee retention rate fell to 90% (2024: 93%), with an adviser retention rate of 91% (2024: 92%).
Despite the fall in some approval areas, SJP had a successful year in 2025 with a £531.4m IFRS profit after tax (2024: £398.4 million). Funds under management rose 16% to £220bn (2024 £190.2 billion at 31 December 2024).
SJP claims to be serving over 20% of UK adults who received regulated advice and says it is responsible for around 10% of all advised invested wealth.
In 2025 it had 1,037,000 clients, broadly stable year-on-year.
The number of advisers within SJP’s partnership fell slightly to 4,934 (2024: 4,920), with gross inflows per adviser of around £4.4m (2024: £3.7m).
SJP recently finished a multi-year programme to reshape its cost base to remove around £100m in costs by 2027, as well as spending £119.4m on its new charging structure (2025: £52.7m spent).
In its key aims for 2026, SJP’s CEO discussed the use of AI tools.
Mark Fitzpatrick, CEO of St James’s Place, said he sees technology as strengthening the human relationship between clients and advisers, rather than replacing them.
He said: “We already have a range of AI-enabled and digital tools which we’ve introduced or piloted. These include tools which respond to questions on our advice framework and business submission processes.
“We are also rolling out tools to capture client-adviser conversations and turn them into structured and compliant ready-to-use reports.
“In 2026 we will continue to build on this range. The goal is simple: to free up more time for advisers to focus on what they do best - building trust, deepening client relationships, and delivering personalised, high-quality advice.”
The annual report also saw SJP’s remuneration committee proposing to increase the potential bonus for CEO Mark Fitzpatrick to a maximum of 250% of base salary (200% previously), following a fall in his total remuneration in 2025.