Here’s your smoking gun.
For those who’ve challenged me to produce evidence that the financial services industry is being propped up by falsified compliance records, hollow service claims, and regulator complicity—read on. A High Court dispute between St. James’s Place (SJP) advisers reveals far more than a contractual disagreement. It exposes the rot beneath the surface of one of the UK’s most protected financial giants.
🔍 The Case That Shines a Light on the Truth
Helen Rogers, an SJP adviser running her Knightsbridge-based appointed representative firm, is being sued by retired SJP partners John and Sherry Cross for withholding the final £813,503 of a £4 million client bank acquisition. The payment was due 18 months after the initial £3.2 million was paid upfront for approximately 800 clients.
Why didn’t Rogers pay?
Because, she claims, the sale was misrepresented. Because many clients weren’t serviced. Because some weren’t even alive.
According to her defence:
“Many of the clients had not been subject to a review since the inception of their investments…
Clients who wished to make withdrawals were not provided with advice…
A number of clients were deceased, leading to their plans being surrounded…
A large number of clients, representing £1.2m of the value… have expressed dissatisfaction concerning servicing standards.”
That’s right: some clients were long dead. Others never received the promised annual reviews. And still others were entirely disillusioned by the lack of meaningful engagement.
This isn’t an isolated complaint. It’s a legal filing.
📄 Manufactured Reviews & Phantom Compliance
I’ve written before:
“Because the dirty little secret is that many of these ‘reviews’ were completely meaningless. Manufactured. Paper trails created after the FCA’s request for data. Firms panicked, backfilled, and called it compliance.”
Some analysts questioned that. Now here’s a case that corroborates it—legally documented. Rogers alleges she inherited not a well-serviced client book, but a spreadsheet of names, many of which were obsolete, uncontactable, or outraged.
Let’s be blunt: this is not compliant conduct. It’s misrepresentation.
And yet, this is the same firm—St. James’s Place—that regulators routinely hold up as a pillar of advice excellence. Why?
🏛️ Who’s Really Protecting Whom?
It’s worth asking why such practices are tolerated. Perhaps the answer lies higher up.
Mark FitzPatrick, CEO of SJP, is a member of TheCityUK Leadership Council—an elite circle of industry CEOs with direct access to the Chancellor and Treasury ministers. This council is the architect of the “growth agenda” and the “deregulation playbook,” nudging the FCA toward a lighter touch in the name of competitiveness.
This isn’t theory—it’s policy. It’s part of the Mansion House Compact. It’s the logic behind funnelling pension savings into private equity schemes while shielding firms like SJP from meaningful scrutiny.
In effect, TheCityUK nudges the Treasury. The Treasury nudges the FCA.
And the FCA backs off—while firms backfill paperwork and bury the dead.
🧨 Why This Matters
This case blows apart the myth that wealth managers are diligently reviewing client portfolios every year. It reveals that client books are sometimes traded like commodities—without due care, without duty of service, and with no one holding the seller to account.
It shows the FCA isn’t just asleep at the wheel. It’s been told not to drive.
🔥 The Takeaway
For every policymaker touting financial services as the UK’s “crown jewel,” this case should serve as a wake-up call. If this is what happens inside the largest restricted advice firm in the country—how many more skeletons lie behind the mahogany doors of Mayfair?
For consumers and planners of conscience, it’s time to demand more than just promises of reform. It’s time for structural independence. Transparent, product-free, and genuinely client-focused financial planning—not manufactured compliance in service of shareholder returns.
Your Money or Your Life
Unmask the highway robbers – Enjoy wealth in every area of your life!
By Steve Conley. Available on Amazon. Visit www.steve.conley.co.uk to find out more.
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