According to the Pridham Report, Baillie Gifford was the top fund group in terms of net retail sales with £855.5m, followed by RLAM with £561.6m.
Fundsmith, Blackrock and Artemis rounded out the top five with sales of £535.6m, £468.2m and £391.9m, respectively.
This comes despite Baillie Gifford and RLAM having only decided to heavily market UK retail products in the past few years.
Author of the report, Helen Pridham told Portfolio Adviser: “In the recent past they have beefed-up their retail marketing teams, but I think it is mainly to do with the fact they have some good products that are relevant at the moment.
“It is also because they don’t have such a lot of retail business on their books that has been on there for some time, so they are not seeing the withdrawals that some of the other managers have seen.”
Baillie Gifford’s top seller in the quarter was Baillie Gifford American with about £200m of inflows, followed by Baillie Gifford Japanese which landed £150m.
Baillie Gifford marketing director James Budden (pictured) said the firm has offered retail products for “many decades” but decided to market its Oeics significantly in this space about five years ago to coincide with the retail distribution review (RDR).
He said: “It is all part of a long-term strategy to become a leading player in the UK retail space which at a product level we see as including both Oeics and investment trusts.”
Baillie Gifford also had the three top-performing funds in the first half of the year, according to FE statistics compiled in July.
RLAM meanwhile stepped-up its retail efforts in 2016 after Phil Read was brought in as head of wholesale in February 2016.
The firm’s best selling products in Q2 were mixed assets, cash funds, short duration global high yield and UK equity income, according to head of marketing Tracy Watt, who could not give a detailed breakdown of inflows into each.
Watt said: “We are known as fixed income players and we have been expanding our investment personnel, but we have expanded our advisory sales team. Phil Read brought in more advisory focused sales people so they very much have been the driver of that increase.”
Elsewhere, coming in sixth position, BMO Global Asset Management recorded its highest ever retail sales in the second quarter with £381.9m. This was boosted by sales of the F&C Global Equity Market Neutral and F&C European Growth and Income funds, the report found.
