Nucleus chief executive David Ferguson has predicted most of his company's growth at the expense of rivals with technology problems has yet to materialise.
Advisers using Aegon's and Aviva's platforms have faced disruption this year because of technology problems brought about by replatforming, with some advisers having difficulty switching business away from these companies.
Nucleus has seen advisers join its platform due to these issues, but Mr Ferguson said "it’s not actually that easy to switch from a platform that has service issues, so I suspect most of the growth from that is still to come."
Mr Ferguson was speaking to FTAdviser in the context of Nucleus publishing its first set of results as a listed company, covering the six month to the end of June 2018, this morning (11 September).
Nucleus listed on the Aim market in July with a market cap of around £140m.
The Edinburgh-based platform saw its assets under administration at the end of June 2018 reach £14.3bn, compared with £12.4bn at the end of June 2017.
Despite this, net inflows fell to £726m, compared with £850m for the same six month period last year.
Mr Ferguson said net inflows had been dented by a combination of nervousness about the market, and the cost and time spent by advisers of implementing the General Data Protection Regulation and Mifid II rules this year.
He said the cost to his business of implementing those regulations is not significant, at less than £100,000.
Nucleus grew the number of advisers that use its services to 1,266, an increase of 7 per cent on the previous year.
Meanwhile profits doubled to £2.2m from the previous £1.1m.
Mr Ferguson said his firm carried out its own technological upgrade four years ago, so he regarded this as work that has been completed and had no plans to undertake a replatforming.
david.thorpe@ft.com
