Quilter is now an entirely UK-based business, having disposed of its continental European life offices. Its closest South African equivalent is PSG Financial Services. Both offer multimanagement portfolios to mass affluent clients. The main difference is that Quilter also provides its investment platform to third parties.
Quilter does not have an institutional fund manager — this was bought out by management when Old Mutual unbundled Quilter in 2018, while about 20% of PSG’s earnings are derived from PSG Asset Management. But unlike PSG, Quilter offers direct share portfolios through its Quilter Cheviot unit — which, in South African terms, would be closest to Sanlam Private Wealth or Investec Wealth & Investments.
Coronation portfolio manager Nicholas Stein says that even though Quilter might look quite rich on an earnings multiple of 16 — in its sector Ninety One is on 12 and Sygnia on 13 — this is still substantially lower than PSG’s 25.
Right now the UK does not look like an attractive economy; it’s on the brink of recession. But Stein says there is a secular move away from traditional defined benefit pensions towards unit-linked defined contribution pensions (what are called living annuities in South Africa).
They only became widely available under the pensions umbrella in 2015 when Pensions Freedom was introduced, allowing a flexible pension drawdown.
Quilter CEO Steven Levin says the group finished the year to December 2025 with strong momentum. The fourth quarter was its strongest quarter of the year, despite market uncertainty caused by speculation on potential tax changes ahead of the UK budget at the end of November.
Levin, speaking in the fourth-quarter update, says the business delivered record full-year net inflows of £9.1bn in 2025, with quarterly inflows consistently above £2bn.
He says this reflects the strength of its platform, which has won several industry awards, a platform where assets finished the year at £105bn, making it the first untied UK-advised platform to surpass £100bn of assets under administration.
He argues that with the platform flows achieving 10% of opening assets under management and administration (AuMA) in the final quarter, it is now very close to becoming the largest and fastest-growing mainstream UK advised platform.
He says the high net worth segment, focused around Quilter Cheviot, brought in satisfactory new business flows. For 2025 overall, that segment delivered net inflows of £686m, representing 2% of opening assets.
Levin, a former head of product development at Old Mutual in Pinelands, says Quilter’s performance in 2025 demonstrates the strength of its two distribution channels.
He says Quilter’s scale, distribution reach and product set make it uniquely positioned to meet customers’ needs and to benefit from the secular growth opportunity that the UK wealth market offers from Pensions Freedom, in particular.
Quilter reports its annual results early in March, but it has already reported its inflows for both 2025 and the December quarter.
In 2025 core net inflows reached £9.1bn, 75% ahead of 2024 (£5.2bn), representing 8% of opening AuMA (2024: 5%)
In the fourth quarter, Quilter benefited from speculation around the tax changes in the UK budget in November, which led to elevated client activity. This impacted both gross inflows and outflows. Against this backdrop, Quilter achieved record core net inflows of £2.4bn, an increase of 21% on the fourth quarter of 2024.
In the affluent segment, where Quilter is a competitive player, quarterly net inflows increased to an annualised £2.41bn from £1.92bn in the fourth quarter of 2024.
In-house Quilter inflows in 2025 increased 12% year on year, but there was a significantly higher increase in third-party sales of 31%.
Quilter continues to improve the productivity of its in-house sales with annualised gross sales per Quilter adviser of £3.7m in the fourth quarter, about 12% higher year on year.
In the more exclusive high net worth segment, quarterly gross inflows of £678m were broadly consistent with prior quarters throughout the year, with total gross inflows of £2.97m for 2025.
Quilter channel gross and net inflows onto the platform increased 22% and 18%, respectively, year on year. Quilter channel net inflows for 2025 increased 12% year on year.
Independent financial adviser channel gross inflows onto the platform increased 31%.