Income for the wealth manager and Financial Planner increased for both the quarter and year on year, driven by higher commissions due to increased trading activity and income from recent acquisitions of £5.2m.

Financial Planning income grew 15.3% to £8.3m in Q3 2020, driven by demand for integrated services and recent acquisitions. 60% of new direct discretionary private client business took advice-led services in the quarter.    

Performance in Q3 was supported by market recovery and organic growth according to the trading update from the company for the three months ending 30 June 2020.

Total income was £92.7m (Q3 2019: £87.3m), an increase of 6.2% year on year. Year to date total income was £268.5m, an increase of 7.6% year on year.

Total discretionary income increased by 3.8% to £79.1m (Q3 2019: £76.2m) due to higher commissions. Year to date total discretionary income grew by 5.4% to £228.6m.

Total funds increased by 12.8% to £46.7bn in the quarter (Q2 2020: £41.4bn), with discretionary funds up 13.7% to £40.6bn (Q2 2020: £35.7bn) driven by improved investment performance and robust inflows. Total funds include £2.7bn of acquired funds following the acquisition of Investec Capital & Investments (Ireland) in the first quarter of the wealth manager’s financial year. 

Q3 discretionary net flows were £0.4bn, a rise of 4.5% and similar levels to Q2. Year to date direct discretionary net flows was negatively impacted by the departure of a low margin institutional account in Q1.

Robin Beer took over as chief executive of Brewin Dolphin in June this year. He said: "We continue to deliver resilient results despite the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic have imposed on our business in supporting our clients and colleagues.

“We are delivering on multiple infrastructure projects despite the challenges of remote working. Next week we switch over to our new client management system following comprehensive testing and remote training of our employees.

“In response to COVID-19 we have continued to review our office operations and have re-opened a number of small offices on a controlled basis, prioritising our employee's and clients' health and safety and ensuring consistency with government's guidelines. We anticipate that our larger offices will take longer to reopen fully.

“We have also reassessed the impact and potential risk on the next phase of our custody and settlement implementation programme, which requires rigorous testing of the new system interfaces with existing technology and remote training for employees. To mitigate any execution and training risk we have pushed back the implementation of the system to the first half of the 2021 calendar year.

“Having transitioned into the chief executive role in June, I am incredibly proud and honoured to work for a Group which has not faltered through the COVID-19 crisis. Our people have continued to deliver on complex infrastructure projects, and our client-facing colleagues have gone above and beyond to support their clients whilst also securing new business."