The SJP Business Sale Purchase scheme has processed up to 300 transactions per year, with a combined annual value of around £200 million, giving St. James’s Place partner firms a structured internal route to either expand or exit their practices. For wealth managers assessing their own succession planning, understanding how that mechanism operates in practice matters as much as knowing the headline numbers.
A Three-Decade Framework Under Regulatory Scrutiny
The Business Sale and Purchase (BSP) proposition is not a recent invention. According to St. James’s Place, it was originally launched in 1992 and has since evolved over three decades alongside major regulatory shifts, including the Retail Distribution Review and, most recently, Consumer Duty. That longevity gives the scheme a degree of institutional depth, though critics have raised questions about the degree of influence SJP retains over valuations and about how straightforward it is for partners to sell their business to an external buyer instead. Selling externally is possible, but the internal route remains the most-travelled path.
The concerns are legitimate ones for any portfolio analysis. Where a single organisation facilitates both the loan and the valuation that underpins a transaction, the potential for conflicts of interest deserves careful scrutiny. SJP partners who have used the scheme, however, describe the process as fair and transparent in practice.
Inside the SJP Business Sale Purchase Scheme: One Buyer’s Experience
Lucy Logan, principal of Calderwood Financial, started her business with SJP in 2021 and began her BSP journey in 2023. Her objective was to build a multi-adviser practice capable of continuing without her when she chose to retire. ‘To do that I needed more clients and, rather than taking years to grow organically, purchasing an existing practice made sense,’ she says.
Logan considered a client-sharing arrangement first. ‘This is where you take on the servicing of the client and the fees are split between the existing business and the new partner,’ she explains. ‘But to me that kind of felt like renting when you can afford to buy.’ She concluded that acquiring an existing practice offered a more durable foundation for a retirement-ready business.
SJP sets clear parameters before a partner firm can proceed as a buyer. Affordability of debt is central: ‘A loan would have to be affordable, so SJP will limit what any partner can borrow to make sure they can afford it,’ Logan says. She notes that SJP’s lending criteria are designed so repayments remain manageable even if interest rates move. The ongoing advice fees generated by the acquired client bank are structured to meet loan repayments, making the debt, in Logan’s words, ‘self-sustaining’.
Logan met exiting adviser Kevin Laidlaw, principal of an SJP partner practice bearing his name, in 2023. The two had already been matched by SJP’s partnership managers before their formal introduction. Logan acknowledges that the matching process has since become more transparent: a bank of sellers is now accessible to prospective buyers, who can review potential matches before approaching. Once matched, both parties visited clients together to smooth the transition, which was particularly relevant given that Laidlaw had not embraced technology to the same extent as Logan.
Logan took on Laidlaw’s clients in three tranches, starting in January 2024, and has now completed the final tranche. She has also recruited an adviser who may eventually buy into the business, extending the succession logic another step forward.
Risk, Valuation and Due Diligence
For anyone evaluating the BSP route, the due-diligence framework is worth examining closely. SJP provides an initial business valuation as a starting point for negotiation, not a fixed price. Buyers can review individual client advice records, including the date of each client’s last annual review, the products held and their geographical location, before committing. SJP requires the purchasing partner to confirm they are satisfied with servicing levels as part of that process.
Consumer Duty now sits at the heart of how BSPs are assessed. ‘SJP ensures that I, as the acquiring partner, have the resources to service the clients properly,’ Logan says. For partners with a five-to-ten-year horizon toward retirement, the SJP Business Sale Purchase scheme represents one of the more structured succession options available within a network model, provided the affordability criteria and due-diligence requirements are met. Guidance on those criteria is available from the Financial Conduct Authority for any partner wishing to benchmark the process against wider regulatory expectations.
