Advised platforms saw gross sales of £22.1bn in the first quarter of 2025, analysis from The Lang Cat has revealed, the highest quarterly total on the firm’s records.

Outflows fell by 3.57 per cent to £16.65bn in Q1, as they settled following the pre-Budget spike in November 2024.

The Lang Cat noted that this represented the first ‘meaningful’ reduction in outflows since they started rising in Q3 2022.

These reduced outflows, alongside the record gross sales, resulted in the best net sales figure for advised platforms since Q2 2022, with £5.44bn in Q1 2025, up by 21.28 per cent compared to the previous quarter.

Assets across advised platforms fell by 0.64 per cent in the first quarter of 2025 to £643.48bn, although this was 7.1 per cent higher than Q1 2024.

The Lang Cat said that market uncertainty in March had fuelled volatility as the tax year end drew closer.

Quilter topped both advised growth (£3.99bn) and net sales (£2.29bn) for the fourth consecutive quarter.

Commenting on the findings, The Lang Cat senior analyst, Rich Mayor, said: “We saw last quarter that the spike in outflows was due to pre-Budget related activity and most platforms we spoke to experienced the same before settling down at end of 2024. That’s carried on into the first quarter of this year as outflows fell in a meaningful way for the first time since they started escalating.

“It’s been a peculiar quarter for platform numbers, where despite very encouraging sales numbers, asset growth is down. The period of uncertainty surrounding ‘Liberation Day’ in March helped liberate platforms of any quarterly growth. As we’ve seen since, the market has been volatile, with significant changes on a regular basis.

“We’ve been speaking with advisers to see how they handled the volatility with their clients, and the majority look to have been on the front foot with proactive communications.

“We noted in our State of the Platform Nation that for the past couple of years market movement has formed the bulk of annual platform asset growth. But the volatility we’ve seen recently could mean net sales become all the more important to platform asset growth this year."

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