Investing with St. James’s Place - Safeguarding your assets

For investments products such as bonds or pensions St. James’s Place actually holds assets (i.e. shares, bonds, property etc) to back your investment. This approach differs from the process for deposit-based investments with a bank or building society, where typically money deposited is used to finance long-term loans to other clients.

For unit trusts and ISAs, assets invested are kept securely held by an independent third party known as a custodian or trustee. We also apply a range of daily, weekly and monthly controls to ensure that the assets the custodian holds are consistent with our records. The key reason for establishing the investment in this way is that effectively the assets are owned by the trustees, not SJP, who do not have a call on the assets.

The solvency of St. James’s Place is closely monitored both by its Board (with advice from an independent actuary) and its regulators (the Financial Conduct Authority, the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Central Bank of Ireland). In particular, we take all reasonable steps to ensure that we are satisfied that the company is able to meet both its current and future commitments.

As a further safeguard, our regulators require us to hold an additional ‘solvency margin’. This provides a further level of protection and ensures that if the company does get close to trouble, it has a buffer to be able to resolve any immediate issues and to meet its future liabilities.