Quilter gets go ahead for business sale
Wealth manager and Financial Planner Quilter has received regulatory approval for the sale of its international business to Utmost Group.
Utmost is expected to complete the £480m deal on 30 November.
The deal was announced in April as Quilter began a process to refocus its business.
Quilter said it expected gross cash proceeds from the sale to be in excess of £480m, with a base sale price of £460m and circa £20m of interest on the base sale price since 1 January.
The firm has previously said the sale was unanimously supported by the Quilter board and will allow the firm to focus on its core UK wealth management business.
Quilter re-structured its business this month, shifting focus towards high net worth and affluent clients.
The firm announced the reorganisation along with its third quarter results.
Paul Feeney, CEO of Quilter, said the reorganisation of the firm is part of plans to drive growth and efficiency across the business.
The core proposition will have two arms. The affluent arm will include Quilter Financial Planning, the Quilter platform, and Quilter Investments. The high-net-worth arm will focused on the group’s DFM services. Mr Feeney said this is because these clients value a more bespoke discretionary managed position.
The firm reported third quarter net inflows of £1bn, a big increase from the £0.1bn reported in the same quarter last year.
The Quilter Investment Platform saw particularly strong flows with year-to-date net flows up 142% to £2.7bn (2020: £1.1bn). Gross flows rose 58% to £6.7bn (2020: £4.3bn) over the same period.
The firm said there was increased adviser usage of the new Quilter platform with year-to-date net flows up nearly five-fold to £1.4bn in the IFA channel.
Quilter’s assets under management and administration were £108.5bn at the end of September 2021.
Net year-to-date flows were £3bn, almost three times the £1.1bn seen in the same period last year.
For the third quarter, Quilter saw net flows of just over £1bn, of which £689m came from the affluent arm and £329m came from the high-net-worth arm.