St. James's Place posts record assets after first-quarter inflows, market gains

By Simon Jessop

LONDON (Reuters) - British wealth manager St. James's Place on Tuesday posted a 8.3 percent increase in funds under management to a record high, boosted by net inflows of client cash and market gains.

SJP, which provides a range of financial services to wealthy individuals, said it continued to see strong demand for its face-to-face advice and was confident of its growth outlook.

Total funds at the end of March were 103.5 billion pounds, up from 95.6 billion pounds at the end of 2018, it said in a statement, helped by net inflows of 2.2 billion pounds and net investment gains of 5.8 billion.

"This performance demonstrates the resilience of our business through the current political and macro-economic uncertainty," Chief Executive Andrew Croft said in a statement.

"There remains both a growing market for trusted face-to-face advice in the UK and an advice gap that represents a major opportunity for us," he added.

The net inflows represented 9.1 percent of the company's assets at the start of the quarter, while the net asset value per share on a European Embedded Value basis, a key measure of performance, was 1,190 pence per share, it added.

(Reporting by Simon Jessop, editing by Sinead Cruise)