St. James’s Place (SJP) has made changes to the ongoing charges of three separate funds with the aim of “offering investors more choice”.
The charge on its Global Smaller Companies fund will reduce from 0.60% to 0.06% and the Global Emerging Markets fund from 0.30% to 0.15%.
Meanwhile, the ongoing charge for the Emerging Markets Equity fund has increased slightly, from 0.37% to 0.39%.
The company has also allocated three managers to oversee the funds.
The Global Smaller Companies fund is now managed by Northern Trust Global Investments Limited, with Robert Bergson as lead portfolio manager.
Bergson is head of small cap quantitative active portfolio management at Northern Trust.
SJP said it is expected to evolve into a multi-manger fund over time.
It has also announced that Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V has been added as the sole manager of the Global Emerging Markets fund.
Tim Dröge and Han van der Boon, portfolio managers for quantitative equities at Robeco, will act as the fund’s lead portfolio managers.
Finally, Aikya Investment Management has been added to line-up of fund managers for the Emerging Markets Equity fund – with Ashish Swarup as the portfolio manager.
Aikya joins ARGA Investment Management, Lazard Asset Management and Wasatch Global Investors.
The changes took place on 20 November.
SJP executive director of investments Tom Beal said: “The changes we are making to the Global Emerging Market fund and Global Smaller Companies are designed to specifically add lower cost strategies to our platform and therefore continue a theme of providing investors with more choice.
“Active quantitative strategies can be incredibly effective when accessing less covered areas of the market at an attractive price point.
“This is key to our fundamental belief to offer choice, innovation, and variety to investors of all type.
“The Emerging Market Equity fund is already a top decile performer amongst peers over the past five years and this change should help maintain the fund’s strong track record.
“Aikya are a London based boutique manager with a dedicated focus on emerging markets.
“The team’s defensive, quality oriented approach blends especially well with the existing growth and value managers in-situ.”
It has been a time of great change for SJP over the past few months.
In September, it was announced that Mark FitzPatrick would be taking over from Andrew Croft as chief executive from 1 December.
Before joining SJP, FitzPatrick was acting as group CEO of Prudential plc (Prudential) on an interim basis.
Prior to this, he was chief financial officer of Prudential from 2017 to 2022 and also became chief operating officer in July 2019.
In October, SJP announced it would be scrapping its controversial exit fees from 2025 as part of an extensive overhaul of its charging structure.
On 23 October, the company suspended dealing in the SJP Property unit trust and deferred redemptions in the Property life and Property pension funds.
The reason SJP gave for the move is a fall in demand for UK commercial property, office spaces remaining vacant post-Covid, as employees continue the trend of remote working and clients increased withdrawals or limiting their investments.
The suspension was put into effect as of 12pm on 20 October 2023.
I wonder when they will stop their withdrawal penalties so that Customers have a choice?