The asset management colossus reported a 22 per cent jump in AuM for 2017 from a year earlier.

US-listed asset management giant BlackRock today announced it brought in net inflows of $367 billion in 2017, a record in the firm's history, and inflows of $103 billion in the fourth quarter.

Total assets under management stood at $6.288 trillion at the end of December last year, a 22 per cent year-on-year rise, it said in a statement. On an adjusted basis, full-year net income was $3.716 billion, a gain over the year of 16 per cent. In Q4, adjusted net income was $1.022 billion, up 20 per cent. BlackRock kicked off the Q4 and full-year reporting season, with major banks due to follow suit in coming days.

The firm, which has adjusted its product line in recent times as low-cost, index funds have boomed at the expense of higher-cost, active funds, said its results showed investment in the firm's business lines were bearing fruit, Laurence "Larry" Fink, chairman and chief executive of BlackRock, said.

The world's asset management sector has seen a partial shift away from active to so-called passive investment approaches in recent years, with investors increasingly turning to low-cost products on the assumption that paying to market-beating Alpha is, in efficient markets, not worth the higher fees in the medium term. Firms such as BlackRock have boomed in the almost decade-long bull market in stocks since the financial crisis of 2008. Its massive AuM size eclipses that of Norway's sovereign wealth fund, for example, which has about $1.0 trillion in AuM.

“Full-year net inflows represented 7 per cent organic asset growth and were positive across client types, asset classes, major regions and investment styles," Fink said. "And we continue to expand the global reach of our integrated platform to investors in high growth geographies like China, where earlier this month we obtained our private fund management registration to manufacture and distribute onshore investment products."

The CEO said that BlackRock's exchange traded funds business, under the iShares brand, logged $245 billion of inflows for 2017. There were, by comparison, net inflows (taking into account outflows) of $24 billion in the Alpha-seeking funds business.

BlackRock said technology and risk management revenue increased 14 per cent for the full year.

"In 2017, we expanded our technology reach, scaling our distribution capabilities through Aladdin Risk for Wealth Management, Cachematrix, iCapital and Scalable Capital," Fink added.

In Q4, the firm had an operating margin of 42.9 per cent.

The firm's board approved a 15 per cent hike in the quarterly cash dividend to $2.88 per share, payable March 22, 2018, to shareholders of record at the close of business on March 7, 2018.