St. James's Place today (17 October) today said there will be no changes for its Asia and recently established Middle East offerings despite signalling a sweeping overhaul of its product structures in the UK.
A spokesperson for the £158.6bn international wealth giant told International Investment: "The changes announced today for 2025 do not directly impact products in Asia and the Middle East."
He further confirmed that there would be no changes to these international products which would continue to have the early withdrawal charges and were subject to the local regulatory rules.
UK-headquartered SJP has offices in Singapore, Hong Kong and earlier this year in the Dubai International Financial Centre.
It's announcement today is widely seen to be responding to pressure by UK regulators by overhauling its UK charging structure, set to come into effect during the second half of 2025.
SJP's shares had fallen by over 20% on Friday (13 October) following a report by the FT that the firm was facing pressure from regulators to reform its fee model in a bid to comply with the recently introduced Consumer Duty.
The stock exchange notice today (17 October) said updates from a review into its charging structure will result in three key changes that will apply to most of its investment wrappers.
The structure of its UK investment bond and pension business will change so that new business will no longer include an early withdrawal charge structure. Instead, new investment bond and pension business will operate with initial charges together with ongoing charges.
SJP will also separate its charges into their component parts: advice charges, fund charges, and product charges, allowing clients to consider the value they are receiving from each element of its services.
The firm said this will also help potential clients to review and compare its charges across the marketplace, and allow more relevant benchmarking of investment performance going forward.
Its charges will be rebalanced towards the value of advice, with initial product charges removed for all products, and ongoing product charges reduced and tiered for large investments.
In 2024, SJP will also introduce a "more consistent" approach to fund charges to reflect the value each fund provides. This means some charges may decrease and others increase, but the firm said that, on average, the impact on fund charges across the whole portfolio will be neutral.
SJP has come under fire for its expensive charges for financial advisers and its penalties for exit withdrawals. In July, SJP announced changes to fees, including a 0.15 percentage point cut to the maximum annual product management fee for about 65,000 clients.
