“Enormous value on the Practice. It's a strategic solution.”
- SJP Partner
St. James’s Place —
Adviser Platform &
Evidence-Led Prioritisation
“Enormous value on the Practice. It’s a strategic solution.”
— SJP Partner
St. James’s Place is one of the UK’s largest wealth-management businesses, supporting roughly one million clients and around £220 billion in client funds.
St. James’s Place is one of the UK’s largest wealth-management businesses, supporting roughly one million clients and around £220 billion in client funds.
I led an 8-person cross-functional squad working on NGCX — the Next Generation Customer Experience — focused on improving the relationship between Partners, Advisers and clients.
The challenge was not a lack of activity. The team was busy. The problem was that effort was being pulled toward inherited backlog items without a strong enough evidence base for what Practices and clients actually needed.
My role was to help the squad move from backlog-led delivery toward evidence-led prioritisation: clearer problems, better validation, faster prototyping and a shared view of what good looked like.
TL;DR
The Problem
NGCX needed to improve the efficiency of the relationship between Partners, Advisers and their clients.
That meant helping Practices reduce avoidable administration, improve client communication and give Advisers more time to focus on advice rather than chasing information, documents or updates.
The approach
I translated the six problem areas into an interactive NGCX Phase 2 prototype covering 12 proposed features across the adviser and client experience.
I then validated the prototype through structured interviews with 27 stakeholders across 17 Partnerships, including Partners, Advisers and Support Staff.
The Outcome
The work created a stronger evidence base for prioritisation, helped the squad identify the most valuable Phase 2 opportunities, and contributed to a 100% increase in partner engagement.
It also gave Product, Engineering, Data and Design a clearer shared model for what the adviser platform needed to become.
What Needed to Be Solved.
The aim of NGCX was to improve the relationship between Partners, Advisers and clients.
That meant improving productivity for Practices, reducing avoidable administration, giving clients a more convenient experience, and helping Advisers spend more time on advice rather than chasing information, documents or updates.
The risk was that the work would become a disconnected feature list.
Before deciding what to build, the squad needed to understand which problems were repeated across Practices, which ones created the most friction, and which ideas were strong enough to shape the next phase of the product.
The key question was simple:
Were we solving the right problems, or just the problems already written down?
Turning Feedback into Evidence.
A comprehensive Partner Practices survey identified six recurring problem areas across the adviser and client journey:
Document exchange and signing
Appointments
Keeping client personal details up to date
Managing payments, transactions and charges
Financial goals
Other people’s accounts and Power of Attorney
These themes gave the squad a much clearer starting point.
Instead of treating feedback as a loose set of opinions, I helped turn it into an evidence base the team could use for prioritisation.
The important shift was not just collecting feedback. It was making the feedback usable: which problems were repeated, which created the most friction, and which were strong enough to shape the Phase 2 roadmap.
That gave the squad a stronger basis for deciding what the prototype needed to test, what the roadmap needed to prioritise, and where the product could create the most value for Practices and clients.
Prototype, Test, Iterate.
The six problem areas were translated into an interactive prototype for NGCX Phase 2.
The prototype covered 12 proposed features across the adviser and client experience:
Adviser chat
Adviser details
Document exchange and signing
Events
Fees and charges
Financial goals
ISA top-ups
Managing appointments
Managing other people’s accounts
Pre-meet
Transaction lists
Updating personal details
The point was not to show a polished future-state product for its own sake.
It was to make the proposed direction tangible enough for Partners, Advisers and Support Staff to respond to properly.
I validated the prototype through in-depth interviews with 27 stakeholders across 17 Partnerships.
Each session followed a consistent structure:
Introduction to the research
Context on the SJP practice, roles and client base
Prototype demo and concept exploration
Overall feedback and prioritisation
This gave the squad a much stronger basis for deciding which proposed features solved real adviser and client problems, which needed rethinking, and which areas had the strongest support from the people who would actually use the product.
What We Heard.
The feedback was positive, but the useful part was the specificity.
Stakeholders were not just saying they liked the prototype. They were pointing to the areas that would reduce administrative effort, improve client communication and make day-to-day Practice work easier.
The strongest responses centred on document exchange, appointment management, clearer client actions, reducing duplicate effort and improving the quality of the adviser-client relationship.
The document feature generated particularly strong feedback. The most common reason was the “colossal” improvement it could make to the client experience. Partners and Advisers felt that a more joined-up and seamless document journey would make them look more professional in front of clients, while also reducing the manual chasing and fragmented communication around the existing process.
That mattered because it connected the feature directly to relationship quality, not just operational efficiency.
A recurring theme was that the product should support the adviser-client relationship, not add another layer of admin on top of it.
That became an important design principle for the work.
Priority Areas.
Three areas stood out as the clearest priorities for Phase 2.
1. Streamlined Document Management
Partners and Advisers wanted a better way to exchange, review and sign documents.
This stood out because the feedback was not only about speed or admin reduction. Advisers saw document exchange as part of the client experience. When the process was fragmented, slow or unclear, it made the Practice feel less joined-up. When the process was seamless, it helped Advisers look more professional and gave clients more confidence.
The opportunity was to reduce the complexity of managing documents across multiple systems by creating a clearer flow: what had been sent, what had been reviewed, what had been signed and what was still outstanding.
This had the potential to reduce administrative burden, improve client communication, remove avoidable delays and strengthen the adviser-client relationship.
2. Enhanced Appointment Management
Appointment management was another clear priority.
The opportunity was to improve how meetings were prepared, scheduled, followed up and connected to the wider adviser-client relationship.
This included helping Advisers understand what needed to happen before a meeting, what information was required, and what actions needed to follow after the appointment.
The value was not only operational. Better appointment management created a better rhythm between Adviser and client, making the service feel more organised, more proactive and more professional.
3. Simplified ISA Contributions
ISA top-ups were identified as an opportunity to create a simpler, more self-serve client experience.
The aim was to make it easier for clients to complete straightforward investment actions while giving Advisers appropriate visibility and reducing unnecessary administrative effort.
This was important because simple financial actions should not create avoidable friction for clients or unnecessary support work for Practices.
These were not just feature ideas. They were evidence-backed problem areas with clear support from Partner Practices.
Journey Direction.
“This really elevates the client experience. It’s is a big evolution in how we work, it should be a massive priority for the business (SJP)”
'How would this work in the real-world with our day-to-day operations?' - This crucial question emerged from both Partner Practices and SJP stakeholders.
Once the strongest priority areas were clear, I mapped the adviser and client journey around the proposed Phase 2 direction.
This helped the squad see the product as a connected experience rather than a group of separate features.
The journey work showed where Advisers needed visibility, where clients needed reassurance, where actions needed to be surfaced, and where the platform had to make ownership clearer.
It also helped the team understand how the proposed features would work together across the wider service: documents, appointments, client actions, financial goals, account management and communication.
That mattered because the team had previously been operating too much in parallel. The journey gave Product, Engineering, Data and Design a clearer shared model of the experience we were trying to create.
Outcome &
Next Steps.
“This is a true game changer. When can we have it?”
The work helped move the squad from backlog-led delivery toward evidence-led prioritisation.
By turning Partner and Adviser feedback into a validated prototype, the team could make better decisions about what should be prioritised for Phase 2 and why.
The process contributed to a 100% increase in partner engagement and gave the squad a faster, more trusted delivery rhythm.
The broader outcome was a stronger way of working. Product, Engineering, Data and Design had a clearer shared view of the adviser journey, the evidence behind the work and the quality bar the platform needed to meet.
The success of the rapid research, prototyping and validation approach also led SJP leadership to reinstate it as a standard framework for future projects.