Our growth businesses are delivering strong client flows and nearly $14 billion of inflows in the wealth management and asset management businesses in the quarter.
So with these positive flows and markets, assets under management and administration are up 21% to $1.2 trillion.
Adjusted operating results for the quarter excluding unlocking, revenues came in strongly at $3.5 billion, up 17%, fueled by continued organic growth and attractive markets.
Earnings rose 32% with earnings per share up 38% reflecting strong business growth and capital management and ROE is exceptional at nearly 48% compared to 35.5% a year ago.
In fact, Investor's Business Daily recently named Ameriprise the number 1 most trusted wealth manager.
Total client inflows were up 64% to $10 billion continuing the positive trend we've seen over the past several quarters.
wrap net inflows were excellent at $9.4 billion, up 65%.
Transactional activity grew for another quarter up nearly 16% over the last year with good volume across a range of product solutions.
Advisor productivity reached another new high up 18% adjusted for interest rates to a record $766,000 per advisor.
In the quarter, recruiting picked up nicely and another 104 experienced advisors joined us.
Let's turn to the bank with total assets grew to nearly $11 billion in the quarter.
Pretax income was $459 million, up 43% and margin was strong at 22.4%, up 320 basis points, which compares very well in the industry.
Assets under management increased 17% to $583 billion.
That's across equity, fixed income, and asset allocation strategies with more than 85% of our funds above the medium on an asset weighted basis on a 3 year, 5 year, and 10 year basis.
We had net inflows of $3.9 billion in the quarter.
This is an improvement of nearly $5.5 billion from a year ago.
Global retail net inflows were $1.8 billion driven by North America, while overall industry sales were a bit weaker in the quarter given the summer months, overall, our flow traction is good.
In terms of global institutional excluding legacy insurance partners net inflows were $3.5 billion.
The team is working hard to generate wins across equity and fixed income strategies in each of our 3 regions.
Sales increased 28% and have shifted to both our structured variable annuity product and our RAVA products without living benefits.
On the insurance side, Life and Health insurance sales increased 77% driven by our VUL product, appropriate given the current low rates.
In fact we consistently returned nearly all of our operating earnings to shareholders annually and if you look at that over the last 5 years we reduced our average weighted diluted share count by 28%.
This is driving our business mix shift with Wealth and Asset Management representing about 80% of earnings.
Combined this allows Ameriprise to consistently return substantial capital to shareholders with 95% of adjusted operating earnings returned in the quarter, putting us on track to achieve our 90% target for the full year.
We are seeing excellent AUM growth of 21% to $1.2 trillion from flows and markets.
Flows in these businesses have improved substantially up over 200% from a year ago and up nearly 140% on a year-to-date basis, representing the successful execution of our growth strategies in each of these businesses.
Revenues in Wealth and Asset Management grew 23% to nearly $3 billion with pre-tax operating earnings of $744 million, up 44%.
Importantly, earnings growth from wealth and asset management outpaced revenue growth, demonstrating the operating leverage of the business and the blended margins for these 2 businesses expanded 370 basis points from last year, with wealth management up 320 basis points and asset management up 500 basis points further illustrating our ability to deliver profitable growth.
This chart clearly illustrates our success executing our growth and business mix shift strategy, specifically the wealth and asset management businesses are driving about 80% of the earnings over the past 12 months.
This is coupled with a stable $700 million contribution from Retirement and Protection Solutions.
Total client assets were up over 25% to $811 billion over the past 2 years.
Revenue per advisor reached a new high of 766,000 in the quarter up 24% over the past 2 years.
Importantly over the past 2 years, the annualized organic growth rate for Wealth Management flows improved to 6% compared to 4% in 2019.
On page 10, you can see that we are delivering growth, as well as excellent financial results in Wealth Management, in fact revenue and earnings for Wealth Management also reached record levels this quarter.
Adjusted operating net revenues grew 23% to over $2 billion fueled by robust client flows, a 16% increase in transactional activities and market appreciation.
Wealth management pre-tax adjusted operating earnings increased 43% to $459 million.
In total, the bank has nearly $11 billion of assets after moving in an additional $1.1 billion of sweep cash onto our balance sheet in the quarter.
In the quarter, the average spread on the bank assets was 144 basis points compared to off-balance sheet cash earnings of 28 basis points.
Expenses remain well managed, G&A expense increased 1% as higher activity based expenses and performance-based compensation are largely offset by expense discipline.
In the quarter, our pre-tax adjusted operating margin was 22.4%, an increase of 320 basis points from the prior year and 100 basis points sequentially.
Over the past 2 years, asset under management increased 18%.
We also saw a net flow shift from outflows in 2019 to a 5% organic growth rate this year.
The operating leverage in asset management is significant with margins put a trailing 12 months of 44.6%, up 830 basis points over the past 2 years.
Turning to Page 12, you see these trends generated excellent financial performance in Asset Management.
Adjusted operating revenues increased 24% to $915 million, a result of the cumulative benefit of net inflows, market appreciation, and performance fees on a sequential basis, revenues grew 4%.
Importantly, our fee rate remained strong and stable at 53 basis points, expenses remain well managed in line with expectation giving to revenue growth.
G&A expenses were up 14% primarily from compensation expense and other variable costs related to strong business performance as well as foreign exchange translation.
Pre-tax adjusted operating earnings grew 44% to $285 million and we delivered a 49% margin.
Moving forward, we expect strong financial performance to continue and anticipate that margins will remain in the mid 40% range over the near term driven by the continued flow momentum and equity markets at these levels.
Let's turn to page 13.
Pre-tax adjusted operating earnings were $192 million excluding unlocking down from $206 million a year ago.
During the quarter, the variable annuity sales increased 28% from last year with 72% of sales and products without living benefit guarantees.
Account value with living benefits represent only 62% percent of the overall book now down another 200 basis points in the past year.
We have similar trends in protection with sales up 77% driven by higher margin VUL sales.
You will observe, that the business continues to perform in line with expectations from a claims perspective, the policy count continues to decline as the book ages and we are garnering additional premium rate increases, now approximately 90% of the book has extensive or substantial credible experience and I will note that we did not incorporate recent improvements in mortality and morbidity related to COVID-19 into our long-term assumptions.
And our economic hedging program has performed well across market cycles with 97% effect in this over the past 5 years.
Finally, we have taken prudent and appropriate actions to manage the risk profile of the business, for example we stopped sales of LTC in 2002 and have successfully implemented premium rate actions and increased protection with our LTC reinsurance partner.
This consistent and prudent approach has resulted in a stable earnings with 24% percent margins and a pre-tax return on capital exceeding 50% with consistent free cash flow generation.
It is now only 20% of our earnings, we have demonstrated that the exposure profile is well managed, and we completed our annual unlocking with very minor updates.
We had holding company available liquidity of $3.7 billion, an excess capital of 2.7 billion at the end of the quarter.
As I mentioned, we returned 95% of earnings to shareholders in the quarter and we are on track to hit our 90% target for the full year.
Our share count declined 28% over the past 5 years, even with issuing shares to fund share based compensation programs.
Over the past year alone, the share count declined 5%.

Summary:
So with these positive flows and markets, assets under management and administration are up 21% to $1.2 trillion.
We are seeing excellent AUM growth of 21% to $1.2 trillion from flows and markets.