Hargreaves Lansdown boosts dividend as profits rise

Attracted record number of clients

Hargreaves Lansdown reported a 10% rise in profits before tax for the first half of fiscal 2021, prompting it to hike its half-year dividend by 6%.

The investment platform posted a pre-tax profit for the six months ended 31 December 2020 of £188.4m compared with £171.1m for the same period a year earlier. The FTSE 100 company also attracted a record 84,000 new clients in the six months to end-December, 2020, and won £3.24bn of net new business, which was up 40% year-on-year. Chief executive Chris Hill said the performance had been driven by younger customers signing up to the platform and trading stocks.  Hargreaves Lansdown hires BBC journalist Susannah Streeter as senior analyst "As our client numbers continue to grow, we...