St. James's Place Wealth Management Plc · DRN-6178365

The complaint Mr T complains that St. James's Place Wealth Management Plc (“SJP”) has unfairly suspended the Property Fund held within his investment bond, preventing him from withdrawing from it. What happened In 2021 Mr T was assigned a bond that was previously held in trust. The bond’s value was linked to the performance of 14 funds, including the Property Fund. In October 2023 the Property Fund was suspended. On 31 December 2023 his bond was worth around £152,000, and the holding in the Property Fund was worth around £6,000 of that. In May 2024 after speaking with his SJP adviser, Mr T requested a withdrawal from the bond of £30,000. Normally he’d have withdrawn an amount from each fund, but due to the suspension, he was advised to withdraw just from the other 13 funds. Mr T complained, saying he wasn’t a willing customer of SJP having inherited the bond, and wanted to end the relationship he had with them, but was being unfairly stopped from doing so by the suspension of the Property Fund. It had been suspended for a year which he felt wasn’t providing a fair value or a good outcome for him and wasn’t in line with the FCA’s Consumer Duty. SJP didn’t uphold the complaint, referring to his investment as being in the Property Unit Trust Fund, explaining they’d reduced the Annual Management Charge (“AMC”) for the fund from 1% to 0.85% and that the suspension was in the best interests of all investors. SJP set out that the Property Unit Trust Fund was being treated differently to the Property Life and Pensions Fund, and the Life and Pensions Fund was allowing certain withdrawals, but none were allowed to date from the Unit Trust Fund. Mr T brought the complaint to our service, where it was considered by an investigator who found that SJP hadn’t done anything wrong. He said the terms allowed for suspension, and that SJP had communicated the suspension to Mr T in a fair way and that by lowering the AMC to 0.85% SJP were recognising the impact on investors. Mr T remained unhappy, in summary because: • He hadn’t agreed to the terms, as he didn’t take the policy out in the first place. • The terms referred to any suspensions as temporary and the fund had been suspended for more than a year which he felt wasn’t temporary. • He felt that he was being forced to stay with SJP and felt that couldn’t be fair and referred to several parts of the Consumer Duty in support of his complaint. • Not being able to access the money was causing him financial hardship. The investigator wasn’t persuaded to change his mind, so the complaint was passed to me for a decision. I requested further information from both SJP and Mr T and the following was provided: • SJP explained that Mr T’s bond is linked to the Life and Pension Property Fund, not the Unit Trust Fund and the AMC for his fund is currently 1%, not 0.85%.

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• I asked Mr T to expand on the financial hardship he was experiencing, because he hadn’t withdrawn from the rest of his bond. He explained that he had been advised not to withdraw for tax reasons. • Mr T provided evidence that his sister, who had also been assigned part of the bond from the same trust, had been able to withdraw. When I asked about why this was, SJP said that they can apply discretion on a case-by-case basis to allow withdrawals. • SJP explained that the suspension has continued to ensure the best possible price for all investors and had the fund not been suspended, the only way to fulfil withdrawal requests would have been to sell the assets at a lower price point. That would result in unnecessarily reduced returns for both those withdrawing and the remaining investors. They’ve received regulatory approval from the FCA. I then issued a provisional decision on the complaint, as follows. My provisional decision “I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. Before going into my findings, I believe it would be helpful to first set out my role. I need to make a decision about whether SJP has acted fairly and reasonably in advising Mr T to withdraw without taking any amount from the Property Fund, taking into account relevant law, regulation and guidance. As I’m not the regulator, it’s not my role to set out whether SJP has broken a specific rule in the course of events, or to fine or punish them. My decision is localised to Mr T’s circumstances – I can’t for instance tell SJP to lift the suspension as a whole and can only account for any impact on him, not other customers. I’ve begun by considering the contract Mr T has with SJP. I can see he’s said he didn’t agree to the terms – however I believe Mr T would have needed to sign the paperwork for the bond to be assigned to him in order to agree to be the owner of it. On 11 June 2021, SJP sent Mr T a letter that said: “We have received the Deed of Assignment dated 2 June 2021 and confirm that ownership of 142 contract(s) has been transferred to you. We enclose your Investment Certificate which should be kept in a safe place for future reference, along with the Terms and Conditions that apply to this contract. The Trustees of the [Trust] should have given you a copy of the Terms and Conditions. If you have not received these however, please contact us and we will provide you with a copy.” I note that Mr T was himself a Trustee so would likely have had a copy of the terms. Against this background, I find it fair to conclude that he agreed to be bound by the terms and conditions and that they are relevant to my decision. The terms of the bond include the following: “7.1 Overview We, acting reasonably and in good faith, may substitute, close or merge Funds at any time. If this affects your Bond then we will write and tell you. 7.5 Delaying transactions If you are invested in a Fund that holds property (for example land or buildings) or other assets that can be difficult to sell, we may delay a request to withdraw some or all of the money from your Bond, or to switch between Funds, by up to six months… We can delay requests in this way if the price at which assets could be sold straight away would significantly reduce the value of the Units allocated to other Investors. If we delay a transaction,

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the prices used when the transaction takes place will be those effective at the time that we allow it.” I’m satisfied that those terms allow funds to be closed and allow SJP to delay actioning withdrawal requests from the bond in certain circumstances, which include the events that have occurred here. When he applied to make the withdrawal from his bond, Mr T’s request was to take £30,000 from 13 of the 14 funds in his bond – he didn’t actually request a withdrawal from the Property Fund. His withdrawal request wasn’t delayed – he was able to withdraw the full £30,000 that he wanted access to. To my knowledge, he’s not made any subsequent formal requests to surrender the amount left in the bond, including the amount in the Property Fund. I appreciate Mr T’s points around the fairness of an extended suspension of over two years, given section 7.5 limits the delay to six months. However, he’s not actually made a request to withdraw from the Property Fund, so in my view section 7.5 hasn’t been engaged here and Mr T’s withdrawal was not delayed. I appreciate that term was relied on by the investigator, and that’s one of the reasons I’m issuing a provisional decision here. It’s clear to me that the term is about delaying an individual withdrawal from the bond and doesn’t dictate the length of time SJP could apply restrictions to the fund itself. I can see Mr T’s withdrawal request was made following a conversation with his SJP adviser, so he was aware of the suspension at the time and as a result didn’t ask for the Property Fund to be included in the withdrawal. In my view, the adviser acted reasonably in the way the withdrawal was set up to exclude the Property Fund, given the request would have likely been declined or delayed and may have delayed the rest of the withdrawal. I note Mr T has said SJP won’t let him withdraw the rest, but I’m not convinced he’s tried to ask for it, especially as he’s said he was advised not to withdraw for tax reasons. For clarity, I note he hasn’t complained about that particular tax advice, so I won’t comment on that here. Based on the circumstances before me, I can’t find that Mr T has been caused hardship by this suspension. As of the end of 2024, his bond was worth around £134,000 and only £6,000 of that was the Property Fund. He’s aware he can access the majority of it and hasn’t done so, and as a result I’m not convinced that he’s been caused any loss by SJP’s handling of the withdrawal request itself. I have taken on board Mr T’s comments about the fact the suspension has made it more difficult for him to plan, and the confusion caused by the fact his sister has been treated differently. So, I’ll set out my findings on the general fairness of the suspension, including the charges and what Mr T has been told about it. I’ve considered SJP’s regulatory obligations, focusing on those most relevant to the complaint. There are several parts of the FCA’s Handbook that apply to fund managers and suspending funds, most prominently Collective Investments Schemes (COLL) chapter 7. The protection of consumers is at the heart of the Consumer Duty, and in my view a suspension isn’t incompatible with that. COLL 7.1.3 sets out that the suspension of a fund can help to protect consumers by ensuring they are prevented from selling their units in a fund at a price that cannot be calculated accurately, including where it is impossible to value, or to dispose of and obtain payment for, all or some of the scheme property. Generally, the purpose of a fund suspension is to safeguard the interests of all investors in the fund – not an individual. It’s not unheard-of that suspensions last years, especially where the aim of the fund manager is to wind down and close the fund, as is the case here. They need to manage withdrawals so that the assets held in the fund can be sold at a reasonably fair price, rather than selling quickly which is more likely to lead to selling the assets cheaply. For funds that own mainly property it is more common for them to be suspended.

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The length of time the suspension goes on for, is unique to each fund. Just like residential property transactions between individuals, there’s no set amount of time a commercially owned property will take to sell. SJP need to balance the individual needs of each customer against the collective need of all investors in the fund. In my view, it is reasonable to suspend the fund in these circumstances in the hope that all investors can get the best possible return from it. I’ve read all of Mr T’s submissions regarding why he believes SJP’s actions are contrary to the Consumer Duty – including the elements he refers to regarding reasonableness and whether they are acting in good faith through the continued suspension of the fund. But even if I were to say it was wrong of SJP to suspend the fund in this way (for clarity this isn’t a finding I’m making) I’d then be going on to consider what would have happened, but for the suspension. As Mr T hasn’t made a request to access the amount invested in the Property Fund, and hasn’t withdrawn from the rest of the bond, I’m not persuaded he’d be in a different position now, had SJP not suspended the fund at all. Turning to the way SJP has communicated with Mr T about the suspension, I can see that when replying to the complaint, SJP treated his investment as though it was in the Unit Trust Fund, rather than the correct Life and Pension Fund. This meant that Mr T was told the AMC had been reduced to 0.85%, and that the suspension could be indefinite – and SJP repeated that to our service. However, the charges on his fund were not reduced and remained at 1% and withdrawals were being allowed in certain circumstances. So, I find that SJP gave Mr T unclear and misleading information and failed to correct this for more than a year. I’m satisfied that compensation of £200 would be fair for the confusion this caused. I appreciate this may have impacted Mr T’s plans for the money, and he may argue that he’d have put in a formal request to withdraw from the Property Fund earlier, had clear information been given. However, as he’s not tried to access any of the bond, I’m satisfied that it’s more likely than not that he wouldn’t have made a formal request before now.” Replies to my provisional decision SJP confirmed they accepted the provisional decision. Mr T didn’t accept it, and said he felt there were some inaccuracies in the decision: • When he took the £30,000 withdrawal, he wasn’t told, or at least doesn’t remember being told, which funds it would come from just that it would be tax free. • In March 2024 he had made a full withdrawal request and provided a copy of that request. He said it was only when SJP were processing that request that he was told about the suspension and was advised not to withdraw the full amount until the suspension was lifted. The investigator then sent Mr T a copy of the £30,000 withdrawal request, which took place in May 2024. We explained that as this was after the full withdrawal request in March 2024, Mr T would have been aware of the suspension of the fund in May and known that the £30,000 wouldn’t come from the Property Fund. Mr T didn’t provide any further comments. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. Having reviewed the comments from both parties, I’ve not been persuaded to depart from the conclusion reached in my provisional decision. Although I can now see that Mr T did

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make a full withdrawal request, he’d previously told our service that he didn’t go ahead with it for tax reasons. I’ve seen no evidence that any requests were made after the £30,000 withdrawal. I’m not persuaded that Mr T would have done anything differently if the Property Fund hadn’t been suspended, as the tax reasons for not continuing with a full withdrawal would have still been present. So overall, I remain satisfied that he hasn’t been caused any financial loss by the suspension of the Property Fund. I’ve received no further comments regarding the £200 compensation for the confusion caused by SJP giving Mr T incorrect information about the fund he held. As such, I see no reason to depart from my provisional decision above, which forms part of this final decision. I find that a fair amount of compensation for the distress and inconvenience caused is £200. My final decision I uphold the complaint. St. James's Place Wealth Management Plc should pay Mr T £200 for the distress and inconvenience caused. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr T to accept or reject my decision before 7 April 2026. Katie Haywood Ombudsman

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