Leaving St James's Place: what it costs and how to do it

If you're with St James's Place and wondering whether it's worth the aggravation to leave, the short answer is yes, it is. 

If you're on one of the old products with an exit charge still running, the charge falls by one percent a year, but SJP's fees cost you more than that every year you stay. So waiting for the charge to disappear actually loses you money.

Let me show you why, because it's the part SJP would rather you didn't work out.

Only on older money. In August 2025, under pressure from the regulator, SJP rebuilt its charges and scrapped the exit fee — the "early withdrawal charge" — on anything invested from 26 August 2025 onwards.

But the old rule still applies to money you put in before that date. On the legacy bonds and pensions, the early withdrawal charge is 6% if you cash in or transfer during the first year, falling by one percentage point a year to 1% in year six, then gone. The catch is that every top-up started its own six-year clock. So if you were paying in regularly, different slices of your pot come free at different times — and some people are locked in as late as 2031, a few all the way to 2036.

So the first job is to ask SJP — in writing, and ask the provider, not your adviser — for a transfer value showing exactly what the exit charge would be today. Get the number. Everything else follows from it.

This is where nearly everyone gets it wrong, and it's the whole point of the article.

The instinct is to wait. Why pay 4% to walk out when it will be free in a few years? So you sit tight, keep paying SJP's fees, and wait for the door to open on its own.

I ran the numbers, and waiting loses in every single year of the schedule. Here's why. The exit charge shrinks by one percentage point a year. But SJP's ongoing cost is now around 1.67% a year all in, against roughly 0.25% to run it yourself — a global tracker under 0.2%, plus a flat platform fee of around £180 a year whatever the size of your pot. That gap is about 1.4% a year, every year, and it's dragging on your whole pot. The exit charge is a one-off, on the way out.

Take a £200,000 pension. Say you're in year three, so the exit charge is 4% and you've got four years left to run. Pay the 4% now, move to the cheap setup, and after those four years you're about £2,500 better off than if you'd waited it out — even after the charge. Here's every year of the schedule, on £200,000, assuming 7% growth:

Leaving wins in all six years. I tested it at 4%, 5%, 7% and 9% growth and at three different DIY cost levels, and the answer never flipped. The one percent the charge drops each year never catches up with the 1.4% the fees cost you each year.

I'll be honest about the size of it: on £200,000 we're talking a few thousand pounds, not a fortune. This isn't a jackpot. But it's a few thousand pounds for two forms and a few weeks of admin, and every year you delay in the belief that waiting is cleverer, it costs you. The barrier is mostly in your head. That's the bit worth naming out loud.

Even after the 2025 tidy-up, SJP's own example puts the all-in cost at around 1.59% for an ISA and 1.67% for a pension — split into an advice charge (0.80% a year), a product charge, and the fund charge on top. There's also an initial advice fee of up to 3%, capped at £30,000, on new money.

Now pay attention here, because pensions and ISAs are not the same animal. For an ISA or a general investment account, platform fees are tiny — a rounding error next to what you're leaving behind. 

Pensions are much more expensive. A SIPP costs more than an ISA at every broker, and with trustee charges, a large pension can run into several thousand pounds a year. 

If you leave SJP and land on one of those, you've swapped a big percentage drag for a smaller one. Better — but not the win it could be.

This is why I use interactive investor for my own SIPP, and why I recommend them: they charge a flat fee, not a percentage. Around £180 a year whether your pension is £100,000 or a million. On a £500,000 pension a percentage platform might take £1,500 a year off you; ii charges the same £180. We don't leave an adviser taking 1.67% only to hand the saving straight to a broker.

(That's an affiliate link — open an account through it and TWL earns a small commission, at no cost to you. It's where my own pension is; I'd point you there either way.)

So on £200,000: SJP's 1.67% is about £3,340 a year. Run it yourself on a flat-fee platform with a global tracker and you're under £500 all in. 

And here's the quiet insult in the percentage model — SJP's charge grows with your pot. Double your money and you double the fee, for the same work. A flat fee doesn't move. The bigger you get, the more a percentage costs you, and the market risk stays yours either way — the fee buys you an adviser, not a safety net.

The mechanics are the same as leaving any adviser, and they're pure admin. You open the matching empty account on a new platform — an ISA to receive an ISA, a SIPP to receive a pension — and you request the transfer from the new platform's end. It contacts SJP and runs the process. Because SJP's funds are their own, the new platform can't hold them, so it'll be a cash transfer: your holdings are sold, the money moves, and you buy your new fund when it lands. That means a short spell out of the market, usually a few weeks.

I've written the full step-by-step in how to leave your financial adviser — it applies to SJP exactly. And if you're still weighing up whether to go at all, here's why most people don't need an adviser in the first place.

Leaving doesn't mean you're on your own. It means you stop paying someone 1.67% a year to be less use than a boring index fund. Those aren't the same thing, however much the exit charge is designed to make them feel like it.

This is what I write about every week — managing your own money without paying someone 1–2% a year to do it worse. The letter is free.

I am not a financial adviser. Nothing here is personal financial advice. This is my own experience and opinion, shared for information and education. Whether transferring makes sense depends on your circumstances — especially if your products carry guarantees or valuable protections. Investing involves risk and you can lose money. Please do your own research before acting.