Quilter share price rises amid cash inflow spike
Quilter saw a sharp increase in the amount of cash flowing into its coffers over the last year, as the wealth manager reported its assets under management shot up to £119.4bn.
In a trading update, the FTSE 250 firm reported £1.8bn in new business over the last quarter, bringing its take-in for 2024 as a whole to £4.8bn.
“Our business generated very strong inflows in 2024, as the strategic initiatives we have put in place over the last few years have delivered results,” said Quilter chief executive Steven Levin.
“Most importantly, our performance accelerated over the course of the year with each quarter incrementally stronger than the immediate prior quarter.”
The news saw Quilter’s share price jump by six per cent in early trading.
While Quilter has never suffered the billions being withdrawn by investors like many other players in the industry, new cash has been significantly smaller than usual over recent couple of years, occasionally dipping into the red.
However, the second half of the year has seen a notable turnaround for the wealth manager, after a very successful third and fourth quarter.
The core flows from the last quarter were larger than the flows from the entire first half of the year combined, despite tax season normally boosting investment activity then and Budget-related turmoil in the second half of the year.
The success has largely been due to Quilter’s investment platform, which saw record quarterly net inflows of nearly £2bn, or nine per cent of Quilter’s assets at the start of September.
“We are the UK’s largest discrete adviser platform and, we believe, the fastest growing amongst our larger company platform peers,” added Levin.
“Our scale and distribution reach makes us uniquely positioned both to serve our customers well and to benefit from the secular growth opportunity that the UK Wealth market offers.”
The group’s productivity was also somewhat up, with £3.3m of Quilter channel gross sales per Adviser, compared to £2.9m in the last quarter of 2023.
Meanwhile, its non-core business continued to suffer, losing £441m throughout the year.