Investors in St James’s Place can be forgiven for reaching for a stiff Scotch this evening - it’s been one hell of a day.

At the close today the company’s share price was down by over 18% to about 640p, a whopping decline in one day.

This year to date the share price is down by 40%.

It all sounds like panicked investors are dumping stock but perhaps there is the hint of light at the end of the tunnel. Bear in mind I am an eternal optimist so I could be wrong on this one but bear with me.

The problems have emerged this week with an FT story and stories elsewhere suggesting SJP was being cajoled by the regulator to review its fees and charges, particularly in light of the Consumer Duty.

Most companies hate to respond to “media speculation” but SJP, one of the UK’s biggest wealth managers, was forced to respond in a statement this morning when it confirmed that a review, or “evaluation” as the company called it, of fees and charges woudl be carried out. The evaluation will include an “assessment” of the fees and charges the firm levies.

The news of the fee review rattled shareholders and the City. Lower fees, if they are introduced, may be good news for clients but it potentially means lower profits and these were already down in the first half.

The company will need to carry out its review swiftly to ensure uncertainty is ended quickly and investor confidence is restored. Whether it can do this quickly is not clear.

Certainly there are issues to face. There is little doubt the while it is a highly successful outfit, as I’ve written many times before, there have been concerns about the opaqueness of charges, exit fees, the model it operates and fund performance. A few too many in-house ‘dog’ funds for the liking of many.

And yes SJP itself is a success story in many ways. Funds under management are nearly £160bn and rising, it has more than 4,700 financial advisers, a successful training academy and many thousands of content clients who seem to value the service they receive. SJP is one of the most committed wealth managers to training and thousands of its advisers are Chartered Financial Planners or traing to be one.

So it’s not all doom and gloom, far from it, but the company will need to work hard to “evaluate” its charges and come up with a solution.

It mentions in its statement today a desire for a “simpler and scalable” charging structure and I’m sure many would welcome that.

I don’t think we’ll ever see SJP in heading for a cut-price advice solution but giving clients a much simpler fee and charging system and perhaps dropping some of the less transparent charges would be no bad thing.

With a new CEO, Mark FitzPatrick, just getting his feet under the desk the time is ripe for a review.

There is no doubt that SJP has huge influence in the wealth management sector and I suspect many advisers benchmark their fees against SJP. If SJP does lower its fees that will have repercussions for the whole advice sector.

The long term benefit, however, will be one for clients and some will say about time.

SJP will be battered by the focus on its fees charges but it may emerge a better and more transparent company. It does a lot of things right and the fact it has accepted that it must review its charges is an important step forward.

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Kevin O’Donnell is editor of Financial Planning Today and a journalist with 40 years of experience in finance, business and mainstream news. This topical comment on the Financial Planning news appears most weeks, usually on Fridays but occasionally other days. Follow @FPT_Kevin