Q2 2020 AUA update

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 £15.8bn

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 £15.8bn 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 £15.8bn, 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 £384m 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 £433m.

- 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

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 £15.8bn compared to £16.1bn, 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

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For further information please contact:

Nucleus

David Ferguson, CEO Tel: +44 (0)13 1226 9800

Stuart Geard, Chief Financial Officer

Shore Capital (Nominated Adviser and Broker)

Hugh Morgan Tel: +44 (0)20 7408 4090

Edward Mansfield

Daniel Bush 

Camarco (Media enquiries)

Jennifer Renwick Tel: +44 (0)20 3757 4994

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 £15.8bn 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.