AJ Bell has posted a 12% jump in pre-tax profit to £68.8m in the first half of its financial year.

The investment platform, reporting its results for the six-month period to 31 March, also posted a 17% jump in revenue to £153.2m.

AJ Bell said it had delivered a “strong set” of H1 results, as the company also breached the £90bn mark for assets under administration (AUA) on its platform for the first time, which totalled £90.4bn. With £5.8bn in non-platform AUA in H1, AJ Bell’s total AUA has reached a new record of £96.2bn.

The group increased its number of retail customers by 9% on H1 last year, to reach 608,000.

AJ Bell also returned a total of £64m to shareholders in the period, consisting of a final dividend of £34m and the completion of a £30m share buyback programme.

“This performance has been driven by our low-cost, easy-to-use propositions, excellent customer service and improved brand awareness, demonstrating the benefits of our continued investment in these areas,” commented AJ Bell CEO, Michael Summersgill.

“Our strong financial position has enabled us to continue investing in the business, whilst also returning £64m to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks since the year end.”

AJ Bell also announced it was “confident” in its outlook and has opted to accelerate business investment in H2 to drive long-term growth.

This has resulted in higher cost guidance, which the company more than offset by increases to its full-year revenue margin guidance.

Summersgill added: “Looking ahead, there is the potential for policy developments to present further market growth opportunities. In particular, a customer-centred approach to ISA simplification could remove the barriers that currently exist between saving and long-term investing in the ISA system.

“Such a change to ISAs would be supercharged by targeted support, which would allow firms to provide personalised guidance, increasing the number of customers who feel confident to invest for the first time.

“We are well positioned to continue to succeed and invest for long-term growth across a range of different market conditions. We have started the second half of the year well, with March’s strong momentum continuing into April.”

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