Net inflows at Nucleus rocketed to £166m in its third quarter, a rise of 102% from the corresponding quarter the previous year, as the investment platform confirmed that is has completed its acquisition of part of OpenWealth’s UK business.

The news comes as Transact and James Hay have both tabled cash offers for Nucleus. Details of the offers have not been disclosed and no deadline has been set for any bids.

Edinburgh-based Nucleus, one of the smaller adviser platforms, opened itself up to bids after major shareholder Sanlam announced it would sell its stake. Sanlam currently owns around 52% of the platform.

According to the Q3 trading update, Nucleus’ total assets under administration stood at £17.3bn at the end of the quarter, an increase of 7% from Q3 2019. These were boosted by £1bn of positive market movements.

Outflows reduced by a fifth on the same period in 2019.

David Ferguson, chief executive and founder at Nucleus, said: "We came into 2020 in great shape and as flows dipped through the height of the pandemic, we chose to maintain our focus and continue to invest in the things that make the greatest difference to our users, in the expectation that momentum would return as it has.

"We will close the year having delivered several major product enhancements, completed the acquisition of the relevant OpenWealth assets, landed our first enterprise firm and started the roll out of our new model portfolio service, Nucleus IMX, all while maintaining operations and service levels through the crisis."