Money continues to roll in at AJ Bell

PENSIONS administrator AJ Bell has continued its strong run of results in the six months to March 31, increasing sales by 20% to £23.9m and pre-tax profits by 31% to £12.2m respectively.

The company, which provides an online platform that allows investors to manage their self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs), also increased the number of clients on its book by 8% to almost 65,000, while the amount of assets under its administration increased by 7% to £16bn.

Founder and chief executive Andy Bell said that while the majority of these new clients were people subscribing to SIPP products, “We have been very pleased by the take-up of our newly-introduced ISA and dealing account on our Sippcentre and Sippdeal platforms”.

Mr Bell said that the firm had now largely completed a strategic objective that the Old Trafford-based firm had embarked on five years ago to diversify purely from being a SIPP operator into a “fully-fledged platform provider” offering retail share dealing, ISA and a series of related services.

The firm launched a SIPP platform for independent financial advisors in April last year, and although this is a “competitive and overcrowded” market, it said the scale and reputation it had built in pensions administration had persuaded many in the sector to use its broader service range.

It launched a new junior ISA on the Sippcentre platform in February, allowing parents to save up to £3,600 a year on behalf of children, and said that early take-up rates for the product had been “encouraging”.

The company is proposing to increase the interim dividend paid to shareholders to 8.5p (2011: 7p).

By March 31, AJ Bell Holdings’ net assets had increased to £31.5m (£23.5m).