Hargreaves Lansdown investors suffer from chaos but profits spike

On the day that many of its one million-plus clients will have seen their funds tumble in value, Hargreaves Lansdown reported booming profits and sales.

The fund giant saw half-year profits up 12% to £147 million.

Sales soared 43% to £3.34 billion as retail punters rushed to buy ISAs, index trackers and other funds vulnerable to stock market falls.

Chris Hill, the chief executive, said the company aims to allow customers to invest securely while “empowering them to save and invest with confidence”.

He said clients have been moving money out of UK funds and into global funds for sometime due to concern about Brexit. Tracker funds are less than 10% of sales.

Hill said: “What we’ll do is provide a sensible tone. Make sure people understand what is happening. What clients should be thinking about is the long term. Short-term wobbles come and go. If you go really big picture, people aren’t saving enough.”

Its client numbers rose by 61,000 to more than a million, aided by “operational issues on a competitor platform”, thought to be Barclays Stockbrokers.

Hargreaves assets under management rose 9% to £86 billion, a figure that will have taken a hit today.

Hargreaves, a FTSE 100 giant, saw its shares fall more than 3%. The stock lost 58p to 1772p, valuing the company at £8.4 billion.

The results were strong enough to allow another rise in the dividend, up 12% to 25p a share — and another multi-million pound windfall for founders Peter Hargreaves and Stephen Lansdown.