St James's Place is facing pressure from regulators to reform its fee model in a bid to comply with the recently introduced Consumer Duty.

People familiar with the matter told the FT that the wealth manager has been discussing additional overhauls to its charging structure to satisfy regulators' concerns.

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SJP has come under fire for its expensive charges for financial adviser and its penalties for exit withdrawals.

The company's proposals to change its fees included removing early withdrawal charges for new clients by mid-2025 and simplifying fees for several of its advisory and administrative services.

However, the people familiar with the matter said SJP executives have been warned by regulators that the proposed changes may not go far enough to meet the Duty's requirements.

As a result, senior managers have been asked to justify keeping exit fees for existing clients - starting from 1% and in some cases, applicable for the first 11 years - but scrapping them for new ones, as the focus of the Consumer Duty centres on a firm's ability to demonstrate value for clients.

Regulators have also raised concerns over whether SJP's high upfront advice costs are in customers' best interests and whether the company's structure might make it difficult for clients to stop paying advice fees in the future, the people added.

SJP has argued that scrapping exit fees for its existing clients may have a significant impact on its balance sheet, since 30% of its assets under management - about $47bn - were subject to exit penalties as of June 2023.

A former employee told the FT that regulators have been pressuring SJP for almost a decade to overhaul its fee structure, as they considered it anti-competitive as it locked customers in, with some clients struggling to understand the fees they were paying.

The former employee told the FT: "The regulators always had questions about the structure, principally because they thought it disguised the true cost of advice to the customer […] that issue had always been there. The Consumer Duty had given the FCA more of a reason to push for this."

The FCA has been contacted for comment.

St James's Place shares slump on Consumer Duty charge cap and inflows slowdown

In stock exchange filing today (13 October), SJP said it continues to build on the work "completed for Consumer Duty". "This programme includes an assessment of our fees and charging models to ensure we operate with a simple and scalable charging platform for the long term. 

"Whilst the evaluation has not yet been completed and therefore no decision has been made, we are confident that all the options under consideration will ensure value for clients and a strong, secure, and sustainable business for all stakeholders. We naturally continue to engage with all of our primary regulators during this process."

The initial changes to fees announced in July included a 0.15 percentage point cut to the maximum annual product management fee for about 65,000 clients, which was forecast to shave off as much as 8% from the wealth manager's 2024 earnings.

In July, when SJP published its half-year results outlining plans to cap charges to comply with the Consumer Duty, its share price fell 16% in a day.

Since then, its share price has dropped nearly 40%, according to data from the London Stock Exchange.