Rogue partners at wealth manager St James's Place employed student labour in a cold-calling operation to hook wealthy clients, a whistleblower has revealed. Chloe Meley, who has given an account of her time as a cold-caller to The Mail on Sunday, was one of those employed for 10 an hour to try to lure high net worth individuals to invest.
The use of the telemarketing firm, run out of a living room in Guildford, contravened SJP's own ban on cold-calling and is at odds with the high-class image the firm projects.
Meley's revelations will provoke fresh controversy about the methods used by the FTSE100 company, which has previously come under fire for charging high fees and offering lavish incentives to its salespeople. SJP said a handful of its advisers have now been disciplined for using the telemarketing firm's services.
Meley took the job at Barnaby Beckett Referrals to pay her way through university in 2018. With a small group of others from the University of Surrey she was told to cold-call well-off lawyers to persuade them to set up an appointment with an SJP adviser – in breach of a ban on cold-calling at the company.
The boss of Barnaby Beckett called herself Jules, but sometimes also Susan or Sarah on the phone. She told the students the work was 'covert', as SJP partners were not meant to use her firm's services.
Meley and the other students were instructed to lie about where they had obtained the lawyers' contact details. Female students were told to call...
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