The rise of the mobile investors has helped wealth manager and investment provider Hargreaves Landsown double client numbers in less than 5 years to reach 1 million clients.

The Bristol-based business says that the milestone has been helped by the “rise of the mobile investor.” Nearly 60% of visits to the HL website are now via mobile and tablet, compared to less than 20% just five years ago, the company says.

The company now administers £82bn in assets on behalf of its 1m clients.

Client numbers rose from 432,000 in 2012 to 736,000 in 2017 and 1,000,040 today.

HL Client Numbers:

30 Jun-12             432,000
30 Jun-13             507,000
30 Jun-14             652,000
30 Jun-15             736,000
30 Jun-16             836,000
30 Jun-17             954,000
16 Nov-17            1,000,040

Chris Hill, chief executive, Hargreaves Lansdown; “I am proud to announce that we now look after the investments of more than a million people.

“Our digital and mobile strategies have been key to our success. The way people want to manage their money is moving rapidly from the desktop to mobile devices and we have seen significant change over the last five years.”

HL says that online remains investors’ favourite way of placing fund trades, with 82.7% of deals placed this way in Q3. The remaining proportion of deals were placed by telephone and post (4% and 4.6% respectively).

Some 3 in every 5 new accounts opened on mobile are by people aged 19 – 35. This compares to just 1 in 5 accounts on traditional desktops. Nearly half (48%) of all mobile trades are completed by people aged 44 or under. This compares to just 25% of all desktop trades completed by the same age bracket.