The advice arm of St James's Place made a loss of £35.3m during 2017, according to its latest results.
St James's Place Wealth Management saw its losses increase from £24.7m in 2016 as it made a number of long-term investments into the business.
During 2017 turnover increased from £735m to £893m but the cost of sales, which consists of money paid to partners for the provision of advice, also rose - from £657m to £801m.
Craig Gentle, chief financial officer of SJP, said: "The company incurs certain expenses, such as partner acquisition and on-boarding costs, IT developments and St James's Place Academy costs.
"The company is required to account for these investments as they are incurred. However, they represent significant long-term investments in the business from which benefits are expected to be derived over the longer term.
"The scale of our investment is significant and is a proportionate response to the sizeable 'advice gap' noted in the Financial Advice Market Review."
In 2017 SJP invested £11.2m in partner acquisition and on-boarding costs, £4.9m in IT developments and £8.1m in its academy. All of these costs were increased on the previous year.
The total cost of long-term investments increased from £21.2m to £24.4m.
SJP saw its client numbers increase from 569,600 to 629,700 over the course of 2017.
Mr Gentle said that during 2018 increasing the number of partners and advisers would remain one of the "key drivers" of the company achieving its long-term growth objectives.
He said SJP's focus for this year would include attracting high-quality advisers, continuing the regional academy initiative and supporting the growth of partner businesses, including the development of their back office operations so advisers could spend more time with clients.
damian.fantato@ft.com
