The latest value for money assessment of St James's Place's 45-strong fund range found more than a quarter of its funds are deemed not to be good value.
Of the 45 funds within the SJP range, 70 per cent were deemed to represent good value - a 10 percentage point increase on last year’s total.
Overall, 32 were deemed to provide good value for money but 13 were deemed to be insufficient value - this represents about £46bn of client cash.
SJP investment director Tom Beal said: “I am pleased that the developments we have made to our funds in preceding years, alongside the strengthening of our own investment team, have contributed to an increase in the proportion of funds delivering value.
“The team and I are committed to making further enhancements to our fund range and are confident in our ability to deliver even greater value to our clients. We are also working to evolve our charging model to bring greater clarity for our clients.
“The primary ‘performance’ element of this year’s assessment compares our funds inclusive of all investment, platform and financial advice charges with benchmarks that don’t consider these elements.
"This creates an additional hurdle when assessing our performance that should be considered alongside the significant value that financial advice can bring. Most other funds in the market do not include such charges.”
Producing a value assessment for money assessment has been an FCA requirement since 2019 in a bid to encourage more demand-side pressure on fund prices.
This work at SJP was overseen by Beal and three non-executive directors.
The value of the fund range was assessed under eight categories, as table one, below shows.
The 13 funds found not to have delivered value according to the above criteria are in table two, below.
The report said St James's Place has already taken action to improve the outcomes related to most of the 13 funds, with manager changes or fund fee cuts.
In all, seven fund manager changes occurred since the last time the value assessment was performed, while fees were cut on five funds.
Four of the fee cuts were achieved through the external fund manager reducing their portion of the charge.
Among the changes made was an expanded mandate for the two SJP gilt funds, which have become global government bond funds.
This, SJP says, should offer greater diversification, improved liquidity and aims to improve the funds' risk/return profile over the longer term.
Meanwhile the Pinebridge was added to the management of the £6bn Balanced Managed fund, replacing Jennison.
That strategy is third quartile over one and three years, and was found to have delivered value overall, and in all of the categories except performance.
The change came at something of a cost, with transaction charges of 0.6 per cent over the past year, as assets were sold and replaced.
The largest of the funds deemed to not represent good value was SJP's Global Equity fund.
