Despite a turnaround in inflows into actively managed equity funds, Perpetual still suffered overall net outflows in its equity funds of $400 million over the financial year 2010.

The result is an improvement on last year. In 2009, the overall net outflows of equity funds were $700 million.

Perpetual saw a clear improvement in inflows to active equity funds.

In 2009 it registered an outflow of $600 million, this year it saw $600 million coming back in.

But in the group's quantitative strategies the picture differed quite dramatically with $1 billion in outflows this year, last year just $100 million was taken out.

Perpetual said these outflows were partly the result of investors switching to the company's active funds.

Perpetual chief executive David Deverall said this development came on the back of strong outperformance of the group's funds and countered a wider industry trend towards index strategies.

"We know that the trend for indexing will not rise beyond what is still a relatively modest level for the market in Australia," Deverall said.

The switch to actively managed funds within the firm also meant more revenues from high fee products, the group said and this helped the rise in Perpetual's profit this year.

The company announced yesterday that it had achieved a net profit of $90.5 million over 2010, compared to $37.7 million in 2009.

The group's total funds under management (FUM) grew by 3 per cent from $26.2 billion to $26.9 billion, but were subdued by market movements in the last quarter of the year.

Perpetual also continues to focus on its private wealth business, which now makes up almost a quarter of the company's profit.

"We want to be the number one advice business to high net worth investors in Australia," Deverall told analysts during a briefing yesterday.

He said the integration of advice practices Fordham Business Advisors and Grosvenor Financial Services was progressing well and that the company had a strong pipeline for new acquisitions.

"The team continues to evaluate pipeline of high quality advisory practices," Deverall said.

But he indicated the company was very selective on the business it eventually acquired.

"We walk away from many more opportunities than we actually pursue to completion."

Former BT Financial Group general manager of advice and private banking Geoff Lloyd joined Perpetual mid-August to head up its Private Wealth division.