🚨 When Marketing Masquerades as Journalism: SJP, the PFS, and the Collapse of Impartiality

Experience has its rewards, they say. But for whom?

This week, Money Marketing—once considered the financial advice profession’s independent trade journal—distributed what can only be described as an unlabelled advertorial for St. James’s Place (SJP), thinly veiled as editorial content. It features Carla Brown, a former employed adviser turned SJP Partner, now presented as the poster figure for launching your “own” business under the SJP model.

Here’s the bait: “We’ll invest up to £100,000 in your future.”
Here’s the switch: It’s a loan. A loan you repay monthly. With interest. In exchange for buying a client book and tying yourself to the SJP model—one built on high charges, tied products, and centralised control.

That’s not empowerment. That’s franchising. And it raises serious questions.

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🧩 Coordinated Influence: A Web of Conflicts

• Carla Brown is not just any adviser. She’s the Chair of the Personal Finance Society (PFS)—a body supposedly independent and committed to upholding the public interest in financial planning. Yet here she is, fronting a corporate recruitment campaign for a product distributor.
• That same PFS has just allocated £1 million in professional funds to support industry recruitment—resources now seemingly boosting the visibility of the SJP Academy, which accounts for half of all industry recruits.
• And then there’s Money Marketing, the trade publication that should provide scrutiny—not distribution—of promotional messaging. The piece was circulated to financial planners without a clear label identifying it as advertising. It leads to a recruitment landing page, not journalism.

This isn’t just clever marketing. It’s a co-ordinated campaign crossing supposed institutional boundaries: a professional body, a commercial distributor, and an independent publisher. The lines between editorial, advertorial, and corporate propaganda are not just blurred—they’re obliterated.

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🧨 Regulatory Blind Spots, Political Alignment

Why isn’t the FCA or ASA stepping in?
Because this campaign aligns with the political growth agenda. SJP is a regulatory cash cow. Its size, reach, and revenue generation shield it from the scrutiny smaller firms would never escape.

And that’s the problem.
We’re seeing the Piscean establishment—the old, top-down, extractive financial model—operating in full glory. Masked as independence. Framed as opportunity. Fuelled by institutional silence.

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🔁 A Call for Transparency, Not Theatre

Advisers deserve the truth:

• That “building your own business” with SJP isn’t sovereignty—it’s subordination.
• That advertorials disguised as editorial are a breach of trust.
• That professional leadership should never be co-opted by the very distributor it’s meant to hold at arm’s length.

This isn’t an attack. It’s an appeal—for clarity, conscience, and consumer protection. If we want to empower the next generation of planners, let’s start by naming these conflicts for what they are.

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Potential rule breaches and regulatory concerns

Here’s a structured list of potential rule breaches and regulatory concerns raised by this coordinated campaign between Money Marketing, the Personal Finance Society (PFS), and St. James’s Place (SJP):

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📌 1. Misleading Advertising – ASA CAP Code Breach

• Claim: “We’ll invest up to £100,000 in your future.”
• Reality: The sum is a loan, repayable with interest.
• Breaches:
  • ASA CAP Code (Edition 12) – Section 3.1 (Misleading Advertising): Fails to make material conditions clear; omits that this is a loan, not an investment.
  • Section 3.3: Marketing must not mislead consumers, either by act or omission, especially in a way likely to affect a consumer’s decision.
  • Section 3.9: If an ad refers to a financial commitment (e.g. loan), key information and obligations must be included or clearly signposted.

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📌 2. Consumer Credit Act & FCA Financial Promotion Rules

• Breach of Consumer Credit Act 1974 (s.55–60):
  • Advertising a credit facility (loan) without clearly stating it is credit, the repayment terms, or APR may constitute an illegal promotion.
• FCA Handbook – CONC (Consumer Credit Sourcebook):
  • CONC 3.3.1R: A financial promotion must be clear, fair and not misleading.
  • CONC 3.5.3R: When advertising credit, firms must prominently disclose key information including “representative APR” and the fact that the offer is a loan.

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📌 3. Conflict of Interest – Breach of Professional Standards (PFS/CII)

• Carla Brown, the featured SJP adviser, is also Chair of the Personal Finance Society—a body meant to act independently of product distributors.
• Issues:
  • Lack of separation between personal commercial interest and role as Chair.
  • Use of PFS resources (£1m in recruitment funding) in a context where SJP benefits disproportionately (as half of all new recruits join SJP Academy).
  • Failure to declare interest in the ad or in PFS materials promoting adviser recruitment.

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📌 4. Editorial Integrity – Breach of Journalism Standards

• Money Marketing circulated what appears to be a sponsored recruitment advert for SJP without clearly identifying it as an advertisement.
• Likely breaches:
  • Editor’s Code of Practice (IPSO) – Clause 2 (Distinguishing Advertising from Editorial): Advertorials must be clearly labelled to avoid misleading readers.
  • Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs) – Schedule 1, Point 11: Failing to clearly identify paid promotions may constitute a misleading commercial practice.

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📌 5. Regulatory Capture – Failure to Manage Organisational Independence

• The overlap between a professional body (PFS), a commercial distributor (SJP), and a trade journal (Money Marketing) raises serious governance concerns.
• Implication:
  • Potential breach of public trust and professional integrity.
  • Apparent co-ordination of messaging and recruitment across entities that should remain independent.

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📌 6. Failure to Meet FCA Principles for Businesses

• SJP’s promotion may breach:
  • PRIN 2.1.1R – Principle 6 (Customers’ Interests): A firm must pay due regard to the interests of its customers and treat them fairly.
  • PRIN 2.1.1R – Principle 7 (Communications with Clients): Communications must be clear, fair, and not misleading—especially regarding financial incentives or support.

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At the Academy of Life Planning, we stand for transparency, not ties. For empowerment, not entrapment. For independence, not inducement. The future of financial planning is Aquarian: ethical, open, and aligned with the lives of those we serve—not the balance sheets of those who sell.

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SJP Advisers’ Debt Burden Rises by £1.5 Million Per Week

As of June 2025, St. James’s Place (SJP) advisers owe a total of £847 million—an increase of £42 million in the first half of the year, or £1.5 million per week. This debt stems from SJP’s Business Purchase and Sale Scheme, which allows advisers to buy books of business or practices, typically from retiring partners.

There are three types of loans under this scheme:

1. Direct loans from SJP (£401m, up from £386.6m), charged at BoE base rate + 3.5% (currently 7.75%).
2. Securitised loans sold to third-party investors (£201m, up from £170m), repaid on the original terms.
3. Bank loans (£244m, down slightly from £249m), with SJP liable for defaults except for Metro Bank, where liability is shared 50/50. Santander is the largest lender in this category (£174.5m).

Repayments are typically spread over 10 years, with SJP deducting repayments from adviser earnings before passing on the balance, ensuring low default rates.

However, advisers are reportedly unable to sell their businesses outside the SJP network, and valuation multiples have fallen by up to 45%, making it harder to exit profitably. Typical purchase prices were 7.5x annual fee income, including 25% for “goodwill.”

SJP defends the model as supporting adviser retention, continuity for clients, and shareholder value.

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