Edinburgh funds platform Nucleus Financial Group said on Friday its assets under administration recovered to end the first half of the year to June 30 at £15.8 billion helped by a 13.1% increase in the second quarter.

The assets were up 3.2% year-on-year.

Customer numbers increased 4.3% year-on-year to 99,797 in Q2 2020 and broke 100,000 in early July.

Advisers actively using the platform increased 3.3% year-on-year to 1,428.

Nucleus Financial’s major shareholder is Sanlam Investments of South Africa.

Nucleus founder and CEO David Ferguson said: “Markets were particularly volatile in the first few weeks of the crisis before recovering some ground and stabilising over the period.

“Our AUA is more or less back to the level we started the year at £15.8bn compared to £16.1bn, helped by a 13.1% increase in assets under administration in Q2 over Q1.

“At the same time, while gross inflows are down on the prior quarter, net inflows have held up well with a 48.6% year-on-year increase in Q2.

“I’m especially pleased that, building on a positive first quarter, net inflows increased by 76.7% year-on-year for H1.

“Our expedited move to accepting scanned documents ensured advisers could quickly adapt to the lockdown situation and helped minimise any friction in the new business process.

“We continue to make very good progress across the business despite the lockdown and have continued to invest in the proposition throughout the period, including our new discretionary managed portfolio solution, IMX, which I expect us to deliver in the coming weeks.”

Nucleus said gross inflows of £384 million were achieved in Q2, “a reduction on the previous quarter as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Despite this, gross inflows for H1 increased 1% year-on-year.