St James's the Place to be

On the back of this, the company is growing client assets strongly. The three months to the end of September saw record net inflows of £1.5bn, up 17 per cent year on year. Of this, 42 per cent was pensions sales, compared with 34 per cent in the comparable period last year. Even after a very rough quarter for asset gatherers, funds under management stood at £54.5bn at the end of September, up 11 per cent on a year earlier.

At an investor day in October, the company reassured that it was on track with its target to double funds under management every five years, which would require a higher average annual growth rate of around 15 per cent. And in terms of adviser numbers, the company is looking at 5-7 per cent annual growth in headcount and expects the benefits of higher-than-normal recruitment over recent years to come though soon as advisers become more experienced.

Client fund retention also remains impressive at 95 per cent, which underlines how "sticky" assets tend to be. In part, this reflects the long-term nature of income from St James's Place's life business - pensions, protection and investment products. This provided £467m of the £596m in pre-tax profits that it generated in 2014, on a European embedded value basis

The company has also made a strategic acquisition of Rowan Dartington, which operates in the growth area of discretionary wealth management, with more than £1bn under its belt. This should allow St James's Place to add direct portfolio management of equities, trusts and other investments to its own advisory service. It has also opened a new bank account in partnership with Metro Bank, as it looks to cater to clients' entire money needs. To this end, it is adding two further external bond funds to its roster in answer to the widespread desire for income among private investors.

One headwind at home has been the Financial Services Compensation Scheme levy, which almost trebled at the half-year stage to £20m, dragging on the bottom line. But this should be seen as a bill for cleaning up some of the scandals in the financial advice industry that industry regulation has hoped to dispel.

St James's shares may look expensive when looked at on a multiple of earnings, but compared with embedded value - a standard valuation measure for the sector - they are priced at a reasonable 1.2 times 2016 forecasts. What's more, the group's progress is expected to be reflected in strong dividend growth as the company moves in on its target of raising the dividend payout ratio to 75 per cent of earnings. Broker Numis foresees dividend growth of about 13 per cent a year over the next five years if targets are met, which would take the yield to about 6 per cent based on the current share price.