DRN-6177231

The complaint Mr M has complained that St. James’s Place Wealth Management Plc (‘SJP’) delayed setting up income payments from his bonds and failed to move £18,000 into an ISA to use his full allowance for the tax year. What happened In September 2024 Mr M met with an SJP adviser having inherited some investments that were being managed by SJP. It was established that Mr M was looking to take some income from his investments, having been using savings to cover expenses following his retirement. Mr M also confirmed to the adviser that in the 2024/25 tax year he’d paid £2,000 into an ISA with another provider (which I will call ‘provider H’). In December 2024 Mr M contacted SJP to ask if regular income payments from his investments had been set up. SJP arranged for an income withdrawal request form to be sent to Mr M. He completed this in January 2025, and income payments commenced at the start of February 2025. Around this time Mr M also signed a letter of authority allowing SJP to obtain information about the investments he held with provider H. Having received information from provider H, in March 2025 SJP contacted Mr M to discuss the possibility of moving these investments over to SJP. I understand it was agreed Mr M would think about this. On 4 April 2025 Mr M called SJP to ask if it had arranged for the remaining £18,000 of his ISA allowance for 2024/25 to be paid into an ISA. SJP said that this had not been done because it was unaware that Mr M required this. Having made enquiries to see if it could organise an ISA contribution before the end of the tax year on 5 April, SJP told Mr M that the relevant deadline to do so had passed and so this would not be possible. Mr M complained to SJP that when he’d met with the adviser, he’d discussed moving £18,000 from a taxed investment into an ISA before the end of the 2024/25 tax year, but this had not been done. He also said that he’d received poor service with regard to his request to set up income payments. In light of the problems Mr M said he’d experienced in his dealings with SJP, he said he was unhappy that the adviser had suggested he transfer over his investments from provider H. SJP’s response on 26 June 2025 said that whilst it had been aware that Mr M would require income from his investments soon, it was not until he rang in December 2024 that it received confirmation that the income needed to start. At this point it arranged for the relevant forms to be completed so that payments could start from 1 February 2025. In terms of making an ISA contribution for 2024/25, SJP said that Mr M had not given explicit instructions for it to arrange this before he rang asking about it on 4 April 2025. By this date, SJP said it was too late for this to be arranged in that tax year. SJP commented that since Mr M’s meeting with its adviser in September 2024, there appeared to have been an unintentional misunderstanding about what Mr M required of SJP.

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It did not accept that it had been at fault in this matter. However SJP suggested the adviser potentially could have been more proactive by contacting Mr M to ask about his intentions for income payments and ISA contributions. It offered £150 which it described as a gesture of goodwill. Mr M did not accept SJP’s offer, stating that the adviser had told him in September 2024 that he would arrange the £18,000 ISA contribution. He said the £150 offered would not compensate him for this money remaining invested in a taxed environment. Mr M suggested that the £18,000 could still have been invested in an ISA after he’d called on 4 April if SJP’s relevant team had not been in a meeting on 5 April. In relation to the possibility that he might move his holdings with provider H to SJP, Mr M commented that SJP’s advisers are paid based on bringing in funds from elsewhere. He suggested that there was a greater incentive for the adviser to get Mr M to transfer in his funds from provider H than to arrange the ISA contribution or the income payments. In response SJP said that because Mr M had not received confirmation that an ISA contribution had been made on his behalf after the meeting in September 2024, it was reasonable to consider he would have realised this had not taken place. It said that based on the evidence it held, it did not consider that the adviser had agreed to arrange an ISA payment during the September 2024 meeting. It also commented that Mr M could have enquired about ISA payments in the meeting he had with the adviser in January 2025 when setting up the income payments, and during a later call on 20 March 2025 when a discussion about transferring the holdings with provider H took place. Unhappy with SJP’s stance, Mr H brought a complaint to this service. He reiterated that he’d been advised in the September 2024 meeting to move £18,000 into an ISA to use his tax year allowance. Mr M commented that this had been delayed because SJP was focusing on him moving his investments with provider H to it. He said he’d now suffered a financial loss because the £18,000 sum would not benefit from tax free growth in an ISA. Our investigator did not uphold this complaint. His view was that on balance the evidence did not show that Mr M and the adviser had discussed making ISA contributions in the September 2024 meeting. He also didn’t think that SJP had been at fault in its dealings with Mr M. Mr M disagreed with the investigator’s findings. He said that when he met with the adviser in September 2024, he’d been given a number of documents to sign. At the same time Mr M said the adviser had asked if he wanted to put some of the SJP investments into an ISA, and he’d confirmed that he wanted to move £18,000 into an ISA. He’d also requested an income from January 2025. Mr M said that during the same meeting he’d been asked to sign documents giving the adviser access to his investments with provider H. He’d been told that the adviser was unlikely to look at the details of these investments, but Mr M said in reality these were the only documents the adviser did look at. Mr M stated the adviser later called him to try and persuade him to transfer provider H’s holdings to SJP. He said that in contrast the adviser should have been arranging his ISA contribution and his income payments. Mr M suggested the adviser was more interested in the possible transfer from provider H because of the commission this would generate. The investigator responded that the evidence did not indicate that in September 2024 Mr M had instructed SJP to initiate the income payments. He considered it was more likely that income payments were first requested by Mr M in December 2024. In terms of the ISA, the investigator concluded that a contribution of £18,000 was not mentioned in the meeting in September 2024 and was not raised with SJP by Mr M until his call in April 2025. He noted

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that the adviser’s recommendation letter in January 2025 did not make any reference to paying into an ISA. Mr M asked that his case be referred for review by an ombudsman. 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. Central to this complaint is what happened at the meeting that Mr M had with the SJP adviser in September 2024. Mr M says that during this meeting it was agreed that £18,000 would be moved into an ISA from his other investments to use his full allowance for the 2024/25 tax year. He also says that he requested that SJP arrange an income for him from his investments that would start in January 2025. The adviser’s recollections of the meeting are that Mr M did tell him that he’d invested £2,000 into an ISA in the tax year. However the adviser says that there was no discussion about utilising Mr M’s remaining ISA allowance for the year. In terms of income, the adviser says Mr M told him his benefits were likely to stop in January 2025 and that he would need an extra source of income. But the adviser considers that although income options were discussed, a course of action to set up an income from Mr M’s investments was not agreed. The adviser produced a financial review document relating to the September 2024 meeting. In that document an objective of making an £18,000 ISA payment was not mentioned. The document did say that Mr M would be seeking an income from his investments. It stated that proportionate to Mr M’s wealth the target income was small, but it did not specify an amount of income that might be required. In December 2024 Mr M phoned SJP asking about the income payments. This led to another meeting between Mr M and the adviser on 10 January 2025 in which I understand that forms for starting the income were given to Mr M. On 23 January 2025 the adviser issued a letter to Mr M in which he explained his reasoning for recommending the setting up of withdrawals totalling £460 a month from two SJP bonds. The adviser stated that Mr M’s immediate objective was to use his investments to cover an income shortfall. The letter did not mention an objective to make a further ISA contribution in that tax year. It was on 4 April 2025 that Mr M rang SJP to ask if it had moved £18,000 into an ISA for him in the 2024/25 tax year. Mr M has said that he made this enquiry on the basis that he understood it had been agreed back in September 2024 that SJP would be arranging this ISA payment for him. I have carefully considered Mr M’s comments and his recollections of the discussions which took place about ISAs. Clearly I cannot know for certain the exact details of the discussions that took place between Mr M and the adviser from September 2024. I therefore need to reach a conclusion on the balance of probabilities, based on the evidence provided. As I’ve said above, the financial review document from September 2024 does not mention that Mr M was looking to make an ISA contribution of £18,000 before the end of the tax year. The January 2025 recommendation letter issued by the adviser does not mention this either. In addition it doesn’t appear that Mr M brought up the issue of making an ISA contribution during the meeting he had with the adviser on 10 January 2025.

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On balance, if Mr M had said that one of his key objectives was to move money into his ISA, I would have expected this to have been recorded in these documents. I appreciate Mr M is adamant that he did ask for this to be arranged, but based on the weight of evidence, my conclusion is that no clear request was made to SJP to make sure that Mr M’s full ISA allowance was used in the 2024/25 tax year. In terms of the income payments, Mr M says that following the September 2024 meeting, SJP also failed to arrange for these to start, and it was only after he rang in December 2024 to check on progress that the necessary paperwork was completed. As I understand it the income did start being paid within a timescale that was suitable for Mr M’s needs, and Mr M hasn’t suggested the fact that the payments didn’t start until early February 2025 caused him particular difficulties. However it’s Mr M’s view that the events leading up to these income payments starting demonstrate that SJP was not focused on his primary objectives. Instead he says that the adviser’s main interest was in getting him to transfer his investments over from provider H. The September 2024 financial review document confirmed Mr M was looking to take an income from his investments, but did not confirm how much. On balance it doesn’t seem to me that following this meeting it had been agreed that SJP would be setting up the income payments, bearing in mind that the level of the payments had not been established. SJP has commented that its adviser could have been more proactive contacting Mr M about his intentions for starting income payments. It offered a goodwill gesture of £150 in relation to this. Mr M should contact SJP if he now wishes to accept this amount. But overall I’m not persuaded that SJP has acted unreasonably in its handling of setting up the income payments. Mr M considers that SJP’s emphasis in its dealings with him was too much related to persuading him to move investments over from provider H, and he has explained why he thinks that was the case. I note his comments, but my view is that the evidence doesn’t suggest SJP’s focus was too heavily concentrated on this possible transfer, in preference to other objectives that Mr M had. Having obtained information about holdings he had with provider H, SJP appears to have left it to Mr M to decide whether he wanted to move these. I appreciate that Mr M will be disappointed with my findings, and remains unhappy that his ISA allowance for 2024/25 was not used in full. However my conclusions based on the submissions provided by both parties are that SJP has not acted unreasonably in its dealings with Mr M, and should not be required to pay compensation. My final decision My final decision is that I do not uphold this complaint, and I make no award. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr M to accept or reject my decision before 11 May 2026. John Swain Ombudsman

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