AJ Bell Signs Up 152,000 Customers as Trading Brokers Push Into UK Investing

AJ Bell added 152,000 platform customers in the year to September 30, taking its total to 796,000, the company said today (Thursday). Most of the growth came from people managing their own money, as direct-to-consumer (D2C) customers rose 30% to 602,000.

Platform net inflows rose 37% to £9.7 billion (about $12.9 billion), and assets under administration reached a record £126.0 billion, up 22%. The fourth quarter alone brought 34,000 net new customers, up 42%, and £2.5 billion of net inflows, up 47%.

London's trading industry is coming home!

That outpaced interactive investor, which added about 41,000 customers over the same 12 months to reach 533,000. Its owner Aberdeen reported yesterday (Wednesday) that daily trades on ii fell 22% from their second-quarter peak.

Trading Brokers Move Into the Same Market

The pool of savers is growing. Britons put £135.7 billion into adult ISAs in the 2024-25 tax year, £32.7 billion more than a year earlier, and subscriptions to stocks and shares ISAs rose by 802,000 accounts, according to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

Brokers best known for CFDs now compete for those savers, though each reports its UK business differently.

IG Group, which bought the Freetrade app for £160 million last year, reported 564,000 average monthly active customers in the UK and Ireland in the third quarter, up 3%, in figures published today.

Freetrade's base slipped 1% to 454,700, while IG's own customers there grew 24% to 109,300. Assets on IG's UK investing platform rose 34% to more than £9.3 billion.

XTB and CMC Markets have built their own ISA offers. XTB, which launched a zero-fee stocks and shares ISA in December 2024, had more than 10,700 ISA and cash ISA accounts by June, and CMC added fractional shares from £1 to its ISA and pension accounts in July.

Neither Trading 212 nor eToro gives a UK customer count. Trading 212 said funded accounts rose 69% in 2025, and its UK revenue jumped 72% to £277.6 million. eToro has sold a stocks and shares ISA through Moneyfarm since 2023.

Advised Customers Grow More Slowly as Trading Cools

AJ Bell's advised business added 12,000 customers, a 7% rise to 194,000, and still holds most of the money: £71.6 billion of platform assets, against £54.4 billion on the D2C side, where net inflows reached £7.8 billion.

Gross platform inflows rose 36% to £21.5 billion and outflows reached £11.8 billion, while market gains added another £13.0 billion. Assets in AJ Bell's own funds and portfolios climbed 36% to a record £12.1 billion.

Chief Executive Officer Michael Summersgill said AJ Bell would keep investing "to further strengthen our position in the fast-growing platform market." The company will publish full-year results on December 3.

Summersgill has urged the government to rethink its ISA reform. From April 2027, the cash ISA allowance for under-65s falls to £12,000 and a 22% charge applies to interest on cash held in stocks and shares ISAs.

Trading has cooled across the market. IG blamed weaker stock trading partly on caution ahead of possible capital gains tax changes in the coming UK budget.

Organic visits from the UK to the 98 retail FX and CFD broker websites tracked by FM Intelligence fell 39.5% in the third quarter to 13.4 million, according to its heat map, though the UK still sent more of that traffic than any other European country.