Quilter cut the amount of defined benefit (DB) transfer business by £400m in the year to the end of March 2019 and stated it remains "cautious" on the merits of such business in the future.
A trading statement from the company released this morning (April 17) showed the company wrote £200m of DB transfer business in the three months to the end of March 2019, compared with £600m for the same period in 2018.
The statement read: "Defined benefit to defined contribution gross sales of £0.2bn in the first quarter of 2019 contrasted with £0.6bn in the first quarter of 2018 as the group’s attitude towards this source of new business remains cautious."
In other news the company reported assets under management and administration of £114.9bn at the end of March 2019.
The advice and wealth management business, comprising Quilter Investors and Quilter Cheviot and £1bn of legacy assets from an acquired business came to £44bn, an increase of £2,8bn in the three months.
Positive market movements in the first three months of 2019 boosted the company’s overall assets under management with £2.5bn of the increase coming as a result of market movements.
Quilter's platform, formerly known as Old Mutual Wealth, had assets of £53.1bn at the end of March, an increase of £3.2bn, with £2.8bn coming from market movements.
Paul Feeney, chief executive of Quilter, said: "As indicated at our full year results, net client cash flows have continued to be affected by the challenging markets.
"However, we continue to be encouraged by the resilience of integrated flows which have remained robust during this period, and the high level of customer asset retention across our businesses which was broadly stable on 2018 at 89 per cent.
"While near-term headwinds remain, this demonstrates that our clients and their advisers value Quilter’s integrated advice-led model, and continues to be supportive of our operating margin and revenue outlook."
david.thorpe@ft.com
