In the group’s asset management business, assets under management rose from £245.7m at the end of September 2014, to £263.9bn today. This translated into a sharp rise in profits – from £341.6m a year ago to £391.3m today.
Net inflows for the year to date were £8.1 billion, comprising £3.5 billion in institutional and £4.6 billion in intermediary. Shortly after the period end, a further £2.3 billion of net new business was seen in the institutional business.
Net revenue in the wealth management division (including the former Cazenove business) for the first nine months was £157.3 million, down from £162.2 million in 2014. Net inflows for the nine months were £0.2 billion, down from £0.4 billion in 2014 and assets under management at 30 September were marginally higher at £30.9 billion (30 September 2014: £30.5 billion).
Michael Dobson, chief executive said the results “reflect the resilience of our diversified business at a time of heightened market volatility.”
Paul McGinnis, an analyst at Shore Capital said the results showed net outflows, but profitability holding up. He said: “The (net inflows) figure for Q3 represents quite a material slowdown, albeit weak markets never help this metric… With respect to the asset management/wealth management split, while profitability held up well in both segments, we were slightly surprised to see net outflows in the Wealth Management division as the other listed UK wealth managers have seen continued inflows in this same period.
“While we regard Schroders as a high quality asset manager, with a well-diversified AuM base (by geography and by asset class) and a very strong balance sheet, we prefer the business models of those asset managers who have a greater ability to monetise periods of strong investment performance via a performance fee mechanism.”
