Thursday 20 January 2022 7:25 am | Updated: Thursday 20 January 2022 7:28 am

AJ Bell customers jump a fifth amid retail investor boom

AJ Bell has come under criticism in recent weeks over its decision to make the purchase of some investment trusts on its platform difficult.

Investments platform AJ Bell increased its customer base by 27 per cent last year amid a surge in retail investment.

Assets under administration have increased by 21 per cent to £75.6bn after the platform’s customer base swelled to 398,000 as increasing numbers of Brits took to using apps to trade and access investment advice.

According to a trading update published today in the quarter ending 31 December underlying net inflows reached £0.9bn, a 13 per cent jump compared to the prior year.

“We have had a solid start to our new financial year with customer numbers, gross inflows and assets under administration all growing steadily,” said Andy Bell, chief executive of AJ Bell. “We continue to see strong demand for our easy to use, low-cost platform across both the advised and direct-to-consumer 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 per cent more than in the same period last year,” Bell added, noting that the company saw gross inflows of £1.6bn to its advised platform.

Despite the interest in AJ Bell’s app share price has tumbled by over a quarter in the past 12 months. However, the brokers at Shore Capital have labelled the stock a buy and recommended buying the stock at 349p.

“AJ Bell is a fabulous business, about to get upgrades. Both its platforms, for advisers and consumers alike, are developed and priced and supported in such a way that they are likely to continue to take market share, which is what we forecast,” said Shore Capital analysts.