Wealth manager and Financial Planner St James’s Place has completed its 5000th transaction under its succession scheme proposition.
Launched in 1992, SJP’s Business Sales & Purchase (BSP) proposition sees 250-300 transactions completed each year with a total annual transaction value of around £200m.
The proposition enables partners to sell their business outright, partial sales, management buy ins and adviser ownership.
SJP facilitates business loans to partners to help fund acquisitions.
At the end of 2025 SJP had outstanding loans to partners of £639.9m (2024: £557.3m), of which £370.1m were directly funded by the group and £269.8m were securitised, according to its annual report.
Of these loans £40.8m were considered to be non-performing as at 30 December 2025, ie where the loan is in default or where a partner has left the business (a rise from £33.1m of non-performing loans in 2024).
Its average loan to value across the total partner lending book was 35% with £5.6m of loans with an LTV of over 100%. The wealth manager received £46m of interest on business loans to partners in 2025.
For the partner loans provided by third parties and guaranteed by SJP, in the event of a default by the partner SJP guarantees to repay the full amount of the loan, with the exception of Metro Bank. For loans from Metro Bank, SJP covers losses up to 50% of the value of the loan drawn.
Loans are secured on the future renewal income stream expected from the partner’s portfolio.
Edward Whitehouse, a SJP partner who has used the schemes multiple times to grow his business, said he has used the scheme to enable his business to continue scaling.
SJP claims to be serving over 20% of UK adults who received regulated advice and says it is responsible for around 10% of all advised invested wealth.
In 2025 it had 1,037,000 clients, broadly stable year-on-year.
The number of advisers within SJP’s partnership fell slightly to 4,934 (2024: 4,920), with gross inflows per adviser of around £4.4m (2024: £3.7m).