David Ferguson, Nucleus' founder and CEO

The firm’s AUA, which stood at £15.8 billion as at 30 June 2020, was 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.

In the second quarter of this year, Nucleus’ gross inflows reached £384m, a reduction on the previous quarter as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this, gross inflows for the first half (H1) of this year increased by 1.0% year-on-year.

Similarly, outflows from the Nucleus platform dropped by 41.9% in the second quarter of 2020, compared to the second quarter of last year and by 25.1% for H1 2020 compared to H1 2019.

The firm’s net inflows for the second quarter of this year 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 Nucleus platform increased by 3.3% year-on-year to 1,428 and remained at similar levels to the first quarter of 2020. The firm’s customer numbers also increased by 4.3% year-on-year to 99,797 in the second quarter of this year and broke 100,000 in early July.

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.

“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.”

• Read all of our articles relating to COVID-19 here.