St. James’s Place has just declared itself “the clear home of trusted financial advice in the UK.”
With record gross inflows of £5.7 billion and total funds under management surpassing £212 billion, few would dispute its financial strength. But we must ask a deeper question: does financial success equate to trust?
At the Academy of Life Planning (AoLP), we see trust not as a by-product of profit, but as a structural condition — something built into the system, not added as a slogan.
The Industrial Model of Trust
The SJP press release, published on 23 October 2025, highlights a “strong quarter for new business” and “continued high client retention.” Beneath the figures lies a familiar logic:
- If clients stay, they must be satisfied.
- If advisers are busy, the model works.
- If the funds grow, trust must be strong.
This is the industrial logic of trust — trust measured by retention. But retention can also mean captivity. Clients may stay not because they are free, but because they are locked into opaque charging structures, illiquid products, or asymmetric information.
The financial services industry has long used “trusted adviser” language to reinforce dependence. It’s a subtle psychological framing — the adviser as protector, the client as grateful recipient. It sounds warm and reassuring, yet it sustains a power imbalance. The structure still serves the firm first, not the client.
When Trust Becomes a Business Strategy
SJP’s message is carefully calibrated. The term “trusted” is repeated alongside “advice-led business model” and “long-term relationships.” In other words, trust has become part of the marketing strategy — a commercial asset as valuable as their funds under management.
But structural trust can’t be trademarked. It can’t be bought or branded.
It has to be earned through design — through systems that decentralise power, disclose costs transparently, and educate clients to make their own informed decisions.
To SJP’s credit, the firm recently implemented a “new simple, comparable charging structure.” Yet, it remains within the same vertically integrated framework — one that owns the product, the platform, and the adviser relationship. Simplifying the fees may make them easier to read, but it doesn’t make them fairer.
Transparency without independence is theatre.
From Captive Advice to Structural Trust
At the Academy of Life Planning, we use a different measure of success. We don’t ask, how many clients stayed?
We ask, how many clients learned, grew, and gained independence?
That is the essence of Structural Trust — a term that defines the enabling environment for true client empowerment. It is built on four foundations:
- Transparency: All costs, incentives, and conflicts are visible. Nothing is hidden behind “advice-led” marketing.
- Integrity: The planner serves the client’s life, not the firm’s fund flow.
- Autonomy: The client retains decision-making power, supported by education, not persuasion.
- Accountability: Systems ensure that decisions can be verified, challenged, and improved — not just justified.
This is the trust that empowers, not entraps. It’s the trust of open architecture, not closed distribution. It’s what happens when the structure itself is designed for the public good — not merely to pass regulatory tests but to uphold moral ones.
Why Structural Trust Is the Future
In today’s post-industrial age, the public no longer blindly follows authority. People seek authenticity, transparency, and collaboration. The next generation of wealth clients want to co-create their plans, not outsource them. They don’t want a “trusted adviser” — they want a trustworthy system.
SJP’s record-breaking inflows show that the old model is still commercially potent, but history teaches us that power built on dependency eventually collapses. The financial intermediation model, like the fossil fuel economy, thrives on extraction — of value, attention, and autonomy. Its decline will come not from scandal, but from irrelevance, as consumers awaken to self-directed, education-first financial planning.
That’s the transformation AoLP exists to lead — from intermediation to empowerment, from trust in people to trust in structure.
The True Home of Trusted Advice
SJP may call itself “the home of trusted financial advice.”
But in truth, the home of trust belongs to those who build it on open foundations.
It belongs to planners who choose transparency over opacity, collaboration over control, education over dependence.
At the Academy of Life Planning, our mission is to equip these planners — the next generation of Holistic Wealth Planners — with the tools, systems, and values to create Structural Trust in every community. Together, we’re building not just a profession, but a movement — one that redefines what it means to serve, advise, and empower.
Because trust isn’t something you claim.
It’s something you create.
And when it’s structural, it doesn’t just last a quarter — it lasts a lifetime.
Call to Action
Join the movement for Structural Trust.
Become part of the next generation of planners redefining what it means to give advice — not for profit, but for people.
👉 academyoflifeplanning.com
Academy of Life Planning 