AMP update reflects dissolution of Australian Wealth Management

Nowhere in AMP Limited’s quarterly cashflows update to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has the company reflected the state of its financial advice business.

The quarterly update reflects the decision by AMP in late May to dissolve its Australian Wealth Management business and move to a new operating model but AMP intends to keep commentary around the advice business confined to its half-year and full-year report.

Thus, the result has been that its latest ASX update has provided no visibility on the health of its advice business.

Instead, the AMP update referenced cashflows with respect to AMP Bank, its Platforms business, its Master Trust and New Zealand Wealth Management.

And, overall, the picture was, at best, mixed with platform and master trust net cashflows down.

However, AMP emphasised the positive being the flows from independent financial advisers (IFAs) to its North platform, up 17%.

The AMP commentary said that the decline in net cashflows from $748 million to $426 million was predominantly driven by the reduction in non-superannuation investment in response to the current economic conditions.

However, it said platforms assets under management were steady at $68.3 billion.

With respect to the Master Trust, AMP said net cashflows reflected a previously announced $4.3 billion mandate loss that transferred in August, resulting in negative net cashflows of $4.9 billion.