Wealth management firm St James’s Place now manages £100 billion worth of assets as a result of increased client inflows. But, despite this, shares in the company dropped by a considerable amount this morning.

The company offers advice concerning pensions, investments and tax. Indeed, there has been a growing demand of its services. This is despite a difficult market backdrop which has caused various investors to pull funds from a variety of money management firms.

Despite the increase in its portfolio, St James’s Place has seen a slowdown in quarterly growth.

It is true that total funds under management rose to £100.6 billion, which was assisted by net inflows of £2.5 billion and investment gains of £1.5 billion. However, growth in gross flows into its investments and tax-free savings products slowed down over the period.

Panmure Gordon analyst, Barrie Cornes, has said to clients:

“There has been a very slight – 3% – miss to gross flows consensus, but we believe that this is in part due to the very tough comparator from last year combined with the state market – SJP isn’t immune.”

Chief Executive of St James’s Place, Andrew Croft, underline the company’s positive performance given broad market instability caused by increasing geopolitical concerns. Equally, he noted it remained on track to meet its medium-term objectives.

Andrew Croft, Chief Executive of St James’s Place, has commented:

“There remains growing demand for high-quality financial advice, notwithstanding the current macro and geo-political uncertainty.”

By the end of September, 22% of the firm’s funds under management were invested in U.S equities, with 19.5% in fixed income. Moreover, 18.7% were invested in UK equities.

At 16:39 BST today, shares in St. James’s Place PLC (LON:STJ) were trading at -5.25%.

At the beginning of August, we reported that St James’s Place gave investors a boost by increasing its dividend by 20%, following a strong first half performance.

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