Total assets under administration at investment platform AJ Bell rose 21% to end the year at £75.6bn.
AUA was up 4% during its first quarter, which translated into net inflows of £1.3bn.
The firm’s ambition to become a bigger player in the direct-to-consumer space appears to be gaining traction, with customer numbers rising sharply.
Advised client numbers rose 17% to hit 131,610, while D2C customers now stand at 251,661 reflecting a 35% jump compared with last year.
In November, AJ Bell launched an investing app at a third of the price of rival Hargreaves Lansdown giving opportunity for further client acquisition moving into 2022.
AJ Bell’s platform reported AUA of £68.1bn, up 23% from last year.
Net inflows were down 7%, however, due to “an exceptional bulk annuity purchase, previously signalled in the FY21 year-end trading update in October, which resulted in a one-off outflow of £241m from both advised platform AUA and AJ Bell Investments AUM in the quarter”.
A year, almost to the day, after Portfolio Adviser reported that AJ Bell’s investment arm had broken through the £1bn mark, the company announced that assets under management ended the year at £2.1bn.
£20bn of assets
Chief executive Any Bell described the start of 2022 as “solid”, adding that the firm “continues to see strong demand for our easy to use, low-cost platform” from the advised and D2C markets.
“In the advised market we had our second-best quarter ever for customer acquisition with 4,690 net new advised customers added in the quarter, 38% more than in the same period last year. Gross inflows of £1.6bn to our advised platform were 23% higher than the comparative period and underlying net inflows were robust in what is normally a quieter period for asset flows.
“The direct-to-consumer market continues to grow strongly, with increasing numbers of people being drawn to the benefits of personal investing. In the quarter we delivered further growth in D2C customers and AUA and are now entrusted with over £20bn of assets by a quarter of a million retail investors.”
