Hello, and welcome to AJ Bell's 2023 interim results video. We're shortly going to hear from Michael Summersgill and Peter Birch, CEO and CFO of AJ Bell. First, let's go through some of the key numbers from the H1. Starting with customers, as reported in our Q2 trading update back in April, AJ Bell's total customer numbers increased by 7% to nearly 470,000 to the end of March, with the growth being driven by the company's platform business. Assets under administration closed at GBP 73.8 billion, up 7% in the period. Total net inflows were GBP 2 billion, with 55% attributable to the advised platform and 45% being D2C.
Moving on to the key numbers from the H1 results announced today, revenue was up 37% to GBP 103.6 million, with strong ad valorem revenue being the main factor in this increase. This was driven by higher net interest income following several rate rises in the period, together with elevated customer cash balances. Custody fees were also up as platform net inflows helped mitigate the impact of last year's market correction on average AUA Together, this helped to offset a 29% fall in transactional revenue, which reflected a reduced level of customer dealing activity compared to the prior year.
The strong overall revenue growth supported planned investment in strategic initiatives, most notably a step up in brand investment, as outlined in our 2022 annual results, whilst also delivering a 61% increase in profit before tax to GBP 41.9 million and an improved PBT margin of 40.4%. Finally, on dividends, the boards declared an interim dividend of 3.5 pence per share, up 26% on the prior year. You can find full details about these results on our website. Now, let's hear from Michael and Peter and get some insight into what's behind these numbers, and also their expectations for the second half of the year and beyond.
For me, it's been a really strong H1 for the business. As we've done for many years in various different market conditions, we've carried on growing the business, we've carried on with organic growth, and we've seen that be successful on both sides of the business, both advised and D2C. We've attracted about 30,000 new customers in H1. Pretty consistent rate of growth on both sides of the business, and we've seen about GBP 2 billion of net inflows come into the business. That, when you consider that it has been a challenging period for retail investors, is very pleasing to see. Most of that did come in over the tax year end period, and we had quite a strong tax year end.
Good continuation of what we've been doing for a number of years, growing the business in both sides of the platform market. Service has always been a critical aspect of providing a compelling platform, and it's something that we've always been strong at. I've been particularly pleased in this period with the service standards, and there's lots of different measures that we have of the customer service that we're providing. I've started leaning heavily towards the data that we get, where customers are directly giving us their feedback. You've got long-term measures like customer retention, and we've, you know, we've got market-leading rates there. The one that I've really gravitated towards in recent times has been the Trustpilot score. We've had a rating of 4.7 stars throughout the calendar year 2023.
That takes you through that really busy tax year end period. The fact that people's experience of using the platform, the quality of service, hasn't dropped at all in that period, you know, that's one of the really pleasing aspects of H1 for me, and that's down to the, you know, the knowledge and the attitude of the people that we've got in the business, which is great to see. When I read the Trustpilot scores, it's the same things that stand out to you every time. It's people talking about knowledgeable staff, it's people talking about quick turnaround times. I know it sounds quite straightforward, but as lots of people know, you don't always get that these days. People very quickly are able to get through to a human being who knows what they're talking about, hugely valued by customers.
It's always great to read them, to be honest, and to see that feedback.
The financials are looking really strong. Revenue and profit both up in the interim period. Revenue up 37%, profit before tax up 61%. What you see is the benefit of our diversified revenue model. We have seen some subdued levels of transactional activity as customers have been a bit more cautious in the current market environment. Counteracting that is the impact of higher interest rates. Rates have gone up many times in the period. That has enabled us to earn more interest income. It's also enabled us to pay a competitive rate of interest to customers on their cash balances. We've also seen higher levels of cash balances in the period than we would typically see. When you take those factors together, and that's really boosted our revenue margins in this 1/2 year.
Taken as a whole, a very pleasing revenue and profit story. The key point on costs is that they're in line with what we guided in December, costs are up 26% in the period. There are three elements to that we highlighted in December. There's a BAU element. You know, the business is growing, so you would expect costs to grow to an extent as a result of that. The second thing to highlight is investment in our people. You know, it's a high inflationary environment. We're a responsible employer. We needed to respond to that, and we did so with a double-digit % increase in pay and reward for our people. That was inclusive of the 2,000 GBP of free shares that we've given to over 1,000 of our employees.
We've also invested in our brand, which has had a GBP 3 million impact on the half year. If you take all that together with the improvement in revenue, we've got a 61% increase in profit before tax, which is a really pleasing result.
... interim dividend of 3.5 pence per share is higher than it would have been if we'd applied the stated policy. We just thought that was the fair thing to do for shareholders, given the high levels of cash generation and the significant profitability improvement in the period. It's a very different macroeconomic landscape. Interest rates are the story of the day. They are at higher levels than we've seen for more than a decade, and that has an impact on investment returns. What's pleasing to see is that with the range of investments that we make available to customers, they are moving assets around. They are making those investment decisions to move, particularly into fixed income.
you know, we've seen the January 2024 Gilts be a very popular investment amongst both customers and advisors. The important thing about all of that is to have a broad range of investments available so that all that money and all that activity stays on the platform. We haven't really seen significant sums of cash moving off the platform. That's not been our experience. What we have observed, though, is the transfers from banks and building societies, which have been one-way traffic for a number of years now, that really has slowed in the period, but it's not a major concern to us.
You know, the main source of new business for us is where people have already got investments elsewhere, whether that's in the platform market, whether it's in a pension scheme elsewhere in the financial services sector, that coming onto the platform, market and coming to AJ Bell, and then when customers have earned additional money in the period, putting that onto the platform. Those are the main sources of business for us, and we've been able to carry on growing the business well through the period as a result of that. It's not really been that inflationary pressures have stopped people from being able to invest, in our experience. What we have seen as a headwind, though, is mortgages repricing.
That's a significant part of every household budget where people have a mortgage, and that's something that's been a bit of a headwind in this period, and we can see that that will continue for the rest of this year, certainly. When interest rates start falling and when all of the mortgages have repriced, you know, that's something that's unknown. Again, it's a short-term factor. It's not gonna stop us growing this business over the long term.
We had good visibility of the increase in interest rate and the impact that that would have on our revenue margins, and that's why last summer we made some pricing changes that benefit our customers, and that's had a GBP 5 million annualized impact on our income statement. Going forward, that is a philosophy that we will continue to adopt, so the customers will benefit from those improved profit margins. Interest rates are expected to reduce over the next year or two. I think economic consensus is that they'll settle around the 2% or slightly above level. For us, that would have no material impact on our revenue margins, because you would expect the rate that we pay out to customers to also reduce as base rate falls.
If base rate fell beneath 2%, that would have an impact on our revenue margins. Importantly, the diversified revenue model that we have typically kicks in when rates fall and other revenue streams pick up. You know, you see the stock markets become more attractive to customers. We see increased transactional activity. We see increased market levels, and that generates, you know, higher income for us as well. You know, we're not concerned about what's likely to happen to interest rates. You know, we think we'll maintain very strong profit margins and revenue margins through the foreseeable future. The investments we're making in the business are threefold. We're investing in our technology, we're investing in our people, and we're investing in our brand.
In, in relation to technology, that will make our proposition more attractive to customers, easier to use, more appealing. That should help us to grow our customer numbers and also maintain a very healthy customer retention rate. In relation to our people, we have over 1,000 people working in our business. They're key to the success of the business. The investments we've made in them, through the pay and benefits improvements and the free share scheme, ensures that we retain and attract the best talent, and that has to be beneficial to the future of the business, too. From a brand perspective, the investment in brand isn't something that pays off immediately. It pays off over time. Over time, it should result in it being easier for us to acquire customers.
It should lower the cost of acquisition per customer, bring high volumes of customers onto the platform, and all of that has financial benefits.
Brand awareness has been a big focus for me. Our brand affinity has always been very high, and we've got great propositions, so I think we've not given ourselves the best chance of achieving what we could achieve in the market. It's a brand that needs some investment. The sorts of things that we've been doing is we retired the AJ Bell Youinvest sub-brand, which has served us well on the D2C side, but we've now rebranded simply as AJ Bell. That gives us the confidence to then really invest in the AJ Bell brand and utilize it for distributing D2C product. The sorts of things that we've been doing, we've launched a new brand advertising campaign. That's been a multi-channel campaign, but really focused on TV and radio.
Then we've moved into new sponsorship areas, so the key focus for us has been the Great Run Series. We've had the first few events now, and it was great to be able to go to the Manchester event last weekend and see you know, the quality of the event, the scale of it, the positivity of everybody at the event. I think it's a great place for us to have our brand, and it's something that I think we'll be able to do more with in years to come as well. Lots of activity there, but this is something that we know is gonna take time. It's something that we're gonna have to invest in over a sustained period of time, and we're committed to doing that.
It's about where we want the brand to be in a few years' time. Good progress in the H1 of the year, but more to do. The reason that brand awareness is important is trust is so important in financial services. You see all the research that you do, all the customers that you talk to, all the advisors that you talk to, being able to have a brand that's, that has trust attached to it. If you're looking after people's life savings for a living, you know, that trust element is crucially important. Therefore, recommendations is an important part of growing a business in our space. Yeah, we've got to get the brand awareness right for that reason.
The second half of FY23, we expect revenue margins to be in line with what we've seen in the H1, and we'd expect costs to be in line with what we guided in December. If you go beyond FY23, we're expecting revenue margins to moderate slightly. The reason for that is twofold. First is we've seen unusually high cash balances on the platform this year. As the volume of cash reduces, if that impacts the level of overall interest income that we generate. We would expect that to moderate a bit during the period beyond FY23.
The other element that we are giving a lot of thought to is remaining very competitive on pricing for customers, and we're keen to make sure that as the business scales, that we pass the benefit of that on to customers in terms of either reduced pricing or higher rates of interest paid to them on their cash balances. Overall, we would expect revenue margins to moderate, but the business to scale and to continue to generate, you know, high profit margins. It is an exciting time. You know, the business has very resilient revenue streams. It's highly profitable, highly cash generative.
You know, that financial firepower gives us the opportunity to make investments in the future of the business in terms of technology, in terms of our people, in terms of our brand, all of which, you know, bring additional opportunity to grow. You know, being in a business that has that ability to do that is, you know, is fantastic, and the future looks really genuinely exciting.
The first thing for me when we talk about outlook is to focus on the market. I think it's a fantastic market to be in. I think it's a rare thing in the UK to have a market that's well-defined and well-understood but is benefiting from structural growth drivers. There's lots of growth opportunity in the market. I'm convinced that we're approaching that market in the right way, and I'm a big believer in our dual channel approach to the platform market, offering an advised and a DTC platform. Crucially, we have to continue to serve that using a single operating model. That's what will drive the unit cost down of servicing the next customer and allow us to keep the pricing that we charge our customers as low as possible. I think there's a lot to be excited about there.
I feel that I've got the right people around me, that we've got a great culture and a great workforce here at AJ Bell. It's really about making sure that we carry on building on those market share gains we've seen for many years and carry on making the most of the big opportunity that's there in front of us.