Platform Transact has axed a number of fees after reporting a rise in funds under direction to a record £55bn.

The company, which announced its annual results today, said it was dropping some charges.

The charges being removed are:

• Buy Commission from 1 March 2024
• JISA wrapper fees from 1 April 2024

The company said it would also continue to pay ‘market leading’ rates of interest on cash deposits and said the recent FCA move to encourage providers to avoid 'double dipping' on cash interest (using the money to reduce charges elsewhere) was in line with its long term practice.

The company added that about a quarter of clients using the platform benefited from the complete offset of their platform annual commission charge from the cash interest earned.

Transact CEO Jonathan Gunby said: “We are pleased to still be reducing our platform charges – this is now 16 years in a row! We continue to make solid progress on our platform digitalisation and the outlook for Transact is very positive.

“Our approach to passing all interest earned on pooled cash back to clients has been well received by our supporting advisers and is already in line with the FCA requirements announced this week.

“While net flows continue to be a challenge across the industry, we are delighted to consistently rank among the top few platforms and achieve a market share of net flows of over 20%.”

Funds Under Direction (FUD) were £55bn on 30 September 2023 and the average for the year was £53.6bn (a 2% increase on FY22). Gross inflows were £6.6bn and net inflows were £2.7bn.

The number of advisers registered on Transact grew 3% from 7,500 to 7,700.

Clients using the Transact platform grew 2% from about 225,000 to 230,000.

Despite the positive figures group revenue increased only slightly by 1% to £134.9m (FY22: £133.6m).  Underlying Group pre-tax profit fell by £2.8m to £63.0m (FY22: £65.8m), after adjusting for non-underlying expenses of £0.4m, with IFRS profit before tax up 15% to £62.6m (FY22: £54.3m).

Commenting on the Full Year results, Alexander Scott, IHP group chief executive said the performance was “solid” and the UK adviser platform market remained healthy but the external market had been “volatile.”