New adviser and licensee relationships have helped Netwealth to expand its business pipeline in the latest quarter.
In its results for the three months to 31 December, the firm said funds under administration (FUA) was $101.6 billion which was an increase of $6.2 billion on the previous quarter.
FUA net inflows were $4.5 billion during the quarter which took inflows for the first half of the 2024–25 financial year to $8.5 billion. The December quarter inflows were up slightly from $4 billion seen during the previous quarter.
“FUA net inflows were driven by consistently high transition rates from existing financial intermediaries and strong conversion rates from the company’s new business pipeline across all client groups and segments.”
FUA was divided between 58.9 per cent in retail, 23.1 per cent in high net worth (HNW), 10.9 per cent in ultra-HNW, and 7.1 per cent in institutional. Based on client types, 40.5 per cent came from wholesale investment, 25.9 per cent came from retail investment, and 33.6 per cent came from retail superannuation.
The total number of accounts increased by 4,272 for the quarter to 151,437 accounts, while funds under management (FUM) increased by $1.5 billion to $24 billion which included FUM quarterly net inflows of $1.2 billion.
The managed account balance was $20.8 billion with net quarterly inflows of $1.1 billion.
During the quarter, it added multiple functionalities to the platform including a workflow tracker for financial advisers, a redesigned portfolio page, online internal transfer functionality, and expanded its managed model suite.
Looking ahead, it said it expects flows to be lower in the third quarter but that the firm is confident in inflows for the overall financial year.
Earlier this year, the firm was named by software firm Finura Group as one of two platforms which could become the “Apple of wealth tech”.
The firm’s Australian Wealth Tech Predictions 2025 report highlighted that the “era of platform promiscuity” – in which advisers utilise several platforms – is drawing to a close, instead replaced by “platform monogamy”.
Peter Worn, joint managing director at Finura, said: “What we saw was a doubling of practices who are using one platform. Last year it was 6 per cent of practices, now it’s 12 per cent. If this gains traction, I think we’re going to see one of the great arms races of all time to consolidate platform usage across the 15,000 advisers in Australia.
“We are absolutely seeing in the platform space a lot of the value creation being concentrated in two businesses fundamentally: HUB24 and Netwealth. That’s reflected in their inflows. While they are still low on market share, they’re growing quite quickly and their acceleration in share prices really caught us off guard.”
