Charles Stanley was buoyed by new clients in its discretionary funds service during the three months to the end of June, as net outflows reached £600m.
The London-listed wealth manager said the £100m of net new money in this “higher margin” category saw discretionary assets under management and advice rise by 3.1 per cent to £13.5bn. It also received the same amount from execution-only clients during the quarter.
But overall the company saw net outflows of £600m for the second successive quarter.
The company’s total client assets rose just 1.2 per cent in the second quarter of the year to reach £24.4bn, primarily due to market movements worth £900m.
Despite this, Paul Abberley, chief executive of Charles Stanley, said he was pleased to see both revenues and funds under management and administration continue to grow.
Core business revenues for the quarter increased by 5.9 per cent to £41.5m driven by fee income growth of 7.7 per cent. This uptick was a result of the continuing service mix change toward discretionary and the completion of the repricing exercise at the end of the last financial year, the company said.
“These are a result of our previous strategic decisions and the improvements have allowed us to focus on the implementation of our transformation programme to improve productivity and operational efficiency,” said Mr Abberley.
In May, the company announced a corporate restructure in which the roles of head of investment management, managing director of Charles Stanley Direct and head of asset management faced redundancy.
The changes sought to achieve an increase of net margin to 15 per cent.
