AUC slightly down at 2018’s end

Assets under custody (AUC) for Australian investors fell slightly in the last six months of 2018, dropping 1.2 per cent from the 30 June, 2018 total to hit $3.58 trillion.

Domestic assets in particular shrunk, down 3.4 per cent over those same time frames to finish the year at $2.33 trillion. The Australian Custodial Services Association (ACSA), who produced these figures), put this flattening of growth down to valuation effects as most asset classes fell over the six months to 2018’s end.

Unsurprisingly, there was a correlation between the fall in domestic AUC and an increase in those invested offshore, with global AUC growing 3.1 per cent from July – December last year to hit $1.25 trillion. The amount of inbound overseas client investment into Australia, meaning assets held in sub-custody, finished 2018 at $1.5 trillion. This was fractionally down on the six months prior.

For the 25 years to June’s end, which marked the first full quarter century for which ACSA had collected the data, assets had grown significantly. At the end of December, 1994, AUC in domestic assets was reported as $635 billion, with just $211 billion offshore.