St James’s Place PLC on Thursday reported a sharp rise in profit for 2024, with record funds under management and strong customer inflows driving a rebound from a loss the prior year. The company also announced a higher dividend and a share buyback.

The Cirencester, Gloucestershire-based wealth management firm swung to an annual pretax profit attributable to shareholders’ returns of £535.9 million, from a £4.5 million loss in 2023.

Pretax profit, which excludes a tax attributable to policyholders’ returns charge of £513.2 million, more than doubled to £1.05 billion from £439.6 million. Diluted earnings per share swung to positive 72.6 pence from a 1.8p loss in 2023.

St James’s Place said total funds under management increased to £190.21 billion at the end of 2024, up 13% from £168.20 billion a year earlier.

Gross inflows rose 19% to £18.41 billion from £15.39 billion, while net inflows of £4.33 billion accounted for 2.6% of opening funds under management, down from 3.5% or £5.12 billion in 2023.

Fee and commission income increased 13% to £3.16 billion from £2.79 billion.

Cash at year-end rose to £447.2 million from £68.7 million, despite short-term costs of £59.5 million post-tax related to implementing its new simplified fee structure.

St James’s Place said that the dynamics of the new charging model, combined with the visibility of future income growth from maturing funds under management, ‘build a powerful picture of how our income can develop in the medium term - conscious, of course, of the expected dip in profitability in 2025 and 2026 as we transition between structures’.

These results follow a turbulent period for the wealth manager. In 2023, the wealth manager announced plans to overhaul its fee structure, including removing exit penalties on certain products, following scrutiny from the UK Financial Conduct Authority.

Over the past year, St James’s Place exited the FTSE 100 in June 2024 before rejoining the index in December.

Chief Executive Officer Mark FitzPatrick said: ‘2024 was a busy year for St James’s Place. Momentum in the business built as the year unfolded, with sustained net inflows and strong investment returns leading to record funds under management. This underpinned an improved financial performance despite short-term costs from implementing our simplified charging structure.’

St James’s Place declared a final dividend of 12.00 pence per share, up from 8.00p a year earlier when it slashed its payout from 37.19p in 2022. This brought total shareholder distributions for the year to £223.6 million, equivalent to 50% of the underlying cash result.

The company also announced a £92.6 million share buyback, having made no repurchases in 2023.

Shares in St James’s Place were down 4.3% at 1,082.00 pence in London on Thursday morning.

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