Nucleus Financial Group PLC Q2 2020 AUA update (9412T)

TIDMNUC

RNS Number : 9412T

Nucleus Financial Group PLC

24 July 2020

24 July 2020

Nucleus Financial Group plc

('Nucleus' or the 'Company')

Q2 2020 AUA update

Assets under administration increase 13.1% on previous quarter to GBP15.8bn

Nucleus (AIM: NUC), a leading independent wrap platform provider, today publishes an update on its assets under administration (AUA) in respect of the three months to 30 June 2020.

Despite the impact of Covid-19 on market volatility, the Company has continued to grow AUA, which stood at GBP15.8bn as at 30 June 2020, up 13.1% on the previous quarter and 3.2% year-on-year. By comparison, the FTSE All-Share Index increased 9.8% on the last quarter and fell by 15.9% year-on-year.

Highlights

- AUA increased to GBP15.8bn, an increase of 13.1% on the previous quarter, driven by the partial market recovery, and up 3.2% year-on-year.

- Gross inflows of GBP384m were achieved in Q2, a reduction on the previous quarter as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite this, gross inflows for H1 increased by 1.0% year-on-year.

- Outflows from the platform reduced by 41.9% in Q2 2020 compared to Q2 2019 and by 25.1% for H1 2020 compared to H1 2019.

- Net inflows for Q2 2020 increased by 48.6% year-on-year and H1 2020 net flows increased by 76.7% year-on-year to GBP433m.

- Advisers actively using the platform increased by 3.3% year-on-year to 1,428 and remained at similar levels to Q1.

- Customer numbers increased by 4.3% year-on-year to 99,797 in Q2 2020 and broke 100,000 in early July.

AUA and inflows

 
                       Quarter    Quarter         H1         H1 
                         ended      ended      ended      ended 
                       30 June    30 June    30 June    30 June 
                          2020       2019       2020       2019 
                          GBPm       GBPm       GBPm       GBPm 
                     ---------             ---------  --------- 
 Opening AUA            13,986     14,753     16,141     13,884 
 Inflows                   384        488        964        954 
 Outflows                (219)      (377)      (531)      (709) 
 Net flows                 165        111        433        245 
 Market movements        1,674        468      (749)      1,203 
 Closing AUA            15,825     15,332     15,825     15,332 
 Daily average AUA      15,112     15,047     15,374     14,725 
                     ---------             ---------  --------- 
 

David Ferguson, Nucleus' founder and CEO, commented:

"The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on all our lives over the last four months and will have a continued impact for a time to come. In this type of situation, we can only control our response to the circumstances, and I'm pleased with how the business has responded. The health and well-being of our staff remain our highest priority, and we made an early and decisive move to have all our people switch to home working. The platform has remained fully operational throughout, and all of our phone lines and messaging systems were switched seamlessly without any downtime or loss of service to advisers."

"Markets were particularly volatile in the first few weeks of the crisis before recovering some ground and stabilising over the period. Our AUA is more or less back to the level we started the year at GBP15.8bn compared to GBP16.1bn, helped by a 13.1% increase in assets under administration in Q2 over Q1. At the same time, while gross inflows are down on the prior quarter, net inflows have held up well with a 48.6% year-on-year increase in Q2. I'm especially pleased that, building on a positive first quarter, net inflows increased by 76.7% year-on-year for H1."

"Our expedited move to accepting scanned documents ensured advisers could quickly adapt to the lockdown situation and helped minimise any friction in the new business process. We continue to make very good progress across the business despite the lockdown and have continued to invest in the proposition throughout the period, including our new discretionary managed portfolio solution, IMX, which I expect us to deliver in the coming weeks."

"While the future impact of the Covid-19 crisis is unknown, we remain positive about the long-term future of the sector. As such, we continue to invest in our people, our platform and our proposition, to ensure we deliver improved service, engagement with users and resilience."

Historical flows and AUA data by quarter

 
              Q3       Q4       Q1       Q2       Q3       Q4       Q1       Q2       Q3       Q4       Q1       Q2 
               2017     2017     2018     2018     2018     2018     2019     2019     2019     2019     2020     2020 
              GBPm     GBPm     GBPm     GBPm     GBPm     GBPm     GBPm     GBPm     GBPm     GBPm     GBPm     GBPm 
-----------  -------  -------  -------  -------  -------  -------  -------  -------  -------  -------  -------  ------- 
 Opening 
  AUA         12,401   12,889   13,577   13,527   14,339   14,693   13,884   14,753   15,332   15,697   16,141   13,986 
 Inflows         687      597      665      600      563      462      466      488      490      497      580      384 
 Outflows      (261)    (205)    (254)    (285)    (281)    (277)    (332)    (377)    (379)    (344)    (312)    (219) 
 Net flows       426      392      411      315      282      185      134      111      111      153      268      165 
 Market 
  movements       62      296    (461)      497       72    (994)      735      468      254      291   (2423)    1,674 
 Closing 
  AUA         12,889   13,577   13,527   14,339   14,693   13,884   14,753   15,332   15,697   16,141   13,986   15,825 
 Daily 
  average 
  AUA         12,715   13,313   13,609   14,086   14,585   14,202   14,399   15,047   15,552   15,704   15,636   15,112 
             -------  -------  -------  -------  -------  -------  -------  -------  -------  -------  -------  ------- 
 

Ends

For further information please contact:

Nucleus

   David Ferguson, CEO                                                     Tel: [phone] 

Stuart Geard, Chief Financial Officer

Shore Capital (Nominated Adviser and Broker)

Hugh Morgan Tel: [phone]

Edward Mansfield

Daniel Bush

Camarco (Media enquiries)

Jennifer Renwick Tel: [phone]

Jake Thomas

Notes to Editors

About Nucleus

Nucleus is a wrap platform founded in 2006 by advisers committed to altering the balance of power in the industry by putting the customer centre stage. It provides independent wrap platform services to 1,428 active adviser users and works with more than 900 financial adviser firms as at 30 June 2020. It is responsible for AUA of GBP15.8bn on behalf of more than 99,000 customers.

The multi award-winning platform offers a range of custody, trading, payment, reporting, fee-handling, research and integration services across a variety of tax wrappers and more than 6,500 asset choices including cash, OEICs, unit trusts, offshore funds, structured products and listed securities, including ETFs and investment trusts. The platform currently facilitates over 1.1 million customer account transactions on average per month.

Nucleus has been awarded a 5-star service rating at the 2019 Financial Adviser Awards and won CoreData's 'Best medium sized platform' for 2019 (and the last eight years), the Schroders 'Platform of the Year' award for 2016, 2017 and 2018 and won 'Best Platform' and 'Platform Innovation' at the 2018 Money Marketing Awards.

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July 24, 2020 02:00 ET (06:00 GMT)