Citigroup and MLC make inroads on inflows

Citigroup / Citicorp and National / MLC Group have emerged as the big winners in retail net funds flow for the September 2004 quarter, according to the Assirt Research Market Share Report.

Citigroup/Citicorp jumped from tenth to second place for net flows over the quarter - a result Assirt attributed to the legislative changes affecting complying annuities, which led to a jump in the sales of the products leading up to the September 20 deadline for the new rules.

National / MLC came from outside of Assirt’s flows table last quarter to take third position in the September quarter due to the inclusion for the first time of $359 million in inflows from its subsidiary, Plum Financial Services.

With the inclusion of the Plum funds, National / MLC had a net inflow of $1.83 billion for the 12 months to the end of September, of which Plum accounted for $1.52 billion.

Another winner in Assirt’s net flows table for the September 2004 quarter was BT/Westpac, which rose to fifth place from ninth place in the June quarter.

The biggest drop for the quarter, which is substantially changed in composition from the June quarter, came from AXA. It’s net flows almost halved compared to the June quarter and its ranking declined from first to seventh.

AMPs inflows declined by a smaller margin during the September quarter, and its ranking dropped from second to fourth.

St. George and Macquarie dropped out of the top 10 altogether during the quarter, to be replaced by State Super Financial Services and Challenger, again due partly to inclusion of its annuity data.

Boutique manager PM Capital slightly increased its inflows in the quarter and Skandia’s slightly declined, but both maintained their positions, at eighth and ninth respectively.

Platinum rose to first place in September from fourth in the June quarter, reporting inflows of $567 million, a performance which helped it to second place in Assirt’s net inflows table for the year to September 30 - one up from its position in 2003.

Despite its finish in the September quarter, AXA also improved one position on its 2003 ranking, reporting inflows of $2 billion for the year, and replacing UBS in first position for the year to 30 September 2004.

However, UBS has been re-classified as wholesale funds distributor and was therefore not eligible to appear in the rankings this year.

Meanwhile, the Assirt figures show the platforms market continues to be dominated by National/MLC for the year to September 30, with just over twice the funds under management of its nearest rival, AMP.

National/MLC had almost 24 per cent of this market as at September 30, with $54 billion in funds under advice, compared to AMP’s $27 billion.

The first eight positions by scale in platform administration are held by the biggest players in retail distribution — the big four banks, the two biggest life companies - AXA and AMP - St. George Group and Macquarie Bank Group