Profit in Morgan Stanley's wealth management division rose 24.6 percent in the first quarter, but new money from clients fell by about one-third, the company said on Monday.

Pretax profit at the world's largest stock brokerage, as measured by its almost 16,000 brokers, rose to $855 million in the first quarter from a year ago. It attributed much of the gain to fees from clients who pay brokers to manage their assets and to interest revenue from loans made to wealthy clients.

Major U.S. brokerage firms are pushing brokers to sell asset-based accounts that charge fees because they are more profitable and stable than traditional commission accounts that rise and fall dramatically with stock market volatility.

Morgan Stanley made a big bet on that theory two years ago by completing its purchase of Citigroup Inc.'s Smith Barney, the industry leader in selling fee-based managed accounts.

New money from clients in fee-based accounts, however, fell 30 percent from a year earlier and 36 percent from the fourth quarter of 2014 to $13.3 billion from $19 billion and $21 billion respectively. The decrease, one of the few weak signs in the quarter, occurred despite a stock market rise.

"Fee-based flows are variable from quarter to quarter," a Morgan Stanley spokesman wrote in an email.

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