First quarter sees record gross advised platform sales and outflows fall. Market volatility affects asset growth despite record sales

There was good news for advised platforms in Q1 with record gross sales of £22.10bn representing the highest quarterly total on the lang cat’s records.   

Q1 also saw outflows fall by 3.57% (£616m) to £16.65bn compared to the previous quarter, settling after the pre-Budget spike in November 2024. This represents the first meaningful reduction in outflows since they started rising back in Q3 2022. Record gross sales combined with reduced outflows resulted in the best net sales for advised platforms since Q2 2022, with £5.44bn in Q1 2025. 

Assets across advised platforms contracted slightly by 0.64% in Q1 2025, totalling £643.48bn, but are up 7.10% compared to Q1 2024 (£600.81bn). Market uncertainty during March over what might be President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ announcements fuelled volatility as tax year end drew near.  

Quilter topped both advised growth (£3.99bn) and net sales (£2.29bn) for the fourth consecutive quarter. 

Rich Mayor, senior analyst at the lang cat, said:  

“We saw last quarter that the spike in outflows was due to pre-Budget related activity and most platforms we spoke to experienced the same before settling down at end of 2024. That’s carried on into the first quarter of this year as outflows fell in a meaningful way for the first time since they started escalating.  

“It’s been a peculiar quarter for platform numbers, where despite very encouraging sales numbers, asset growth is down. The period of uncertainty surrounding ‘Liberation Day’ in March helped liberate platforms of any quarterly growth. As we’ve seen since, the market has been volatile, with significant changes on a regular basis.  

“We’ve been speaking with advisers to see how they handled the volatility with their clients, and the majority look to have been on the front foot with proactive communications.  

“We noted in our State of the Platform Nation that for the past couple of years market movement has formed the bulk of annual platform asset growth. But the volatility we’ve seen recently could mean net sales become all the more important to platform asset growth this year.” 

*contains estimates for advised platform business