Investment platform and SIPP provider AJ Bell has reported pre-tax profit up a modest 6% year on year to £58.4m for the year ended 30 September.

Customer numbers rose strongly, increasing by 57,687 to 425,652 and the company expects further growth.

Revenue was up 12% to £163.8m (FY21: £145.8m).

The company said its financial performance over the past 12 months had been “strong.”

During the year it invested in its new online offerings Dodl and Touch and cut investment prices.

Despite the growth in revenue, platform inflows dropped by £1.2bn to £5.8bn (FY21: £7.0 bn) and platform Assets Under Administration ended the year at £64.1bn, a drop of 2% as strong net inflows were hit by adverse market movements of 11%.

AJ Bell CEO Michael Summersgill said: “2022 has been another successful year for AJ Bell. Our trusted, dual-channel platform, serving both the advised and D2C markets, drove organic customer growth of 16% to over 425,000 and delivered £5.8 billion of net inflows across the platform.

"Our customer retention rate also remained extremely high at 95.5%, evidencing the quality of our propositions and the strong service levels we provide to our customers. 

“Our profitable, sustainable business model and strong financial position has supported continued investment in our customer propositions and our people whilst enabling us to again increase our ordinary dividend to shareholders. The board has proposed a final dividend of 4.59 pence per share, increasing the total ordinary dividend for the year by 6% to 7.37 pence per share.”

Looking ahead, Mr Summersgill said that while market volatility was likely to persist in the short-term, structural growth drivers for the UK investment platform market “remain strong” and AJ Bell had significant growth opportunities.