St James Place has appointed a new chief investment officer.
Chris Ralph had been the company's CIO for a decade, after joining SJP in 2009. The company has now confirmed he has taken up the role of chief global strategist.
Mr Ralph will be replaced by Tom Beal, who has been deputy chief investment officer for a year, and previously worked as a divisional director for the company.
SJP's CIO is involved in selecting external fund managers who run money on behalf of the company's clients.
Mr Beal has been an SJP employee since 2008 and previously worked for JP Morgan and Credit Suisse.
Commenting on the change, Mr Ralph said: “I can convinced Mr Beal will do a superb job and is well prepared to take on the additional responsibility.
"Under his leadership our investment management approach will continue to evolve in order to better serve our clients today and into the future.
"His ability is supported by our investment committee, which continues to be led by David Lamb, our investment consultants and our growing in-house investment team.”
Mr Ralph said his new role will allow him to communicate ideas to clients.
Before joining SJP in 2009 he worked at Fidelity and NatWest Markets.
The past year has seen SJP make a number of changes to the roster of external managers which run money on behalf of its clients.
The most high-profile of these changes was the replacement of Neil Woodford as a fund manager in the company’s UK equity fund range in June 2019, moving the £3.3bn of assets, held across three seperate funds, to Columbia Threadneedle and RWC.
david.thorpe@ft.com
