Unit trust sales rise to record

Sales of unit trusts and personal equity plans reached record levels in April, according to new figures from the industry's trade body yesterday.

Retail unit trust sales rose to pounds 1.1bn, about pounds 100m above last month's total, while net sales of PEPs touched pounds 1.08bn, the highest total ever. The number of accounts also reached record levels, rising by 250,000 to 7 million.

The increase in sales came despite the start of a new tax year, traditionally seen as marking an end to the ritual tax-planning investment frenzy in the run-up to the 5 April deadline.

However, the figures from the Association of Unit Trusts and Investment Funds (Autif) also showed that net sales to institutions, at pounds 19m, picked up only slightly last month compared with an outflow of pounds 64m in March.

Despite gross sales of pounds 800m, institutional sell-offs, including pounds 194m from the Far East sector, excluding Japan, brought net sales down.

Autif said the decline suggested that although individual savers were warming to unit trusts and PEPs after a sales fall in 1995, big institutions may be more in tune with where the UK and world's stock markets are headed in the coming year.

The trade body added that savers' money was pouring into unit trusts as an alternative to lower-yielding building society investments.