Coutts & Co has over 70,000 high net worth clients across the UK through a network of 26 offices. Founded in 1692, the private bank offers a holistic service to clients, through a variety of products and services, covering sophisticated investment products together with expertise in trust and fiduciary service, and UK tax and banking services. Coutts ‘commercial banking arm also provides a full banking service to UK businesses.

Coutts, which opened its Birmingham office in 1994, has built its reputation on understanding the needs of individuals and businesses, whatever their walk of life, and responding to them effectively and discreetly. With aspirations to be the most admired wealth manager in the world, private bankers are grouped into eight areas of expertise to match clients with similar financial requirements. This grouping enables the bankers to develop a wealth of knowledge, expertise and solutions to the benefit of clients. These groups include; entrepreneurs, professionals, executives, landowners, sports and entertainment, commercial and international. With specialism, comes intellectual capital (entrepreneurs: leveraging assets for tax efficiency and geared returns; professionals: pensions advice; sportsmen/women: making a narrow earnings window last a life time).
In addition to providing expert banking and wealth management services to private clients, Coutts was the first private bank in the UK to have a dedicated onshore philanthropy team, and the first to have a dedicated family business team that is able to connect family business owners.

With a 300 year-old aspirational brand comes the need to actively manage the proposition so that it remains relevant to clients. Hence clients are assisted through the Coutts Philanthropy Service to build a "giving strategy"; there is a programme of forums for philanthropists and family business owners to meet and learn from each other; there are education programmes for the next generation before they are due to inherit; and expert seminars for successful women.

Coutts also recently launched its Social Enterprise Advisory Service - the first of its kind in the UK. This service brings together a panel of leading independent experts from within the field of social enterprise, who together will focus on advising clients interested in becoming involved with this diverse sector on the best way to navigate it, finding opportunities to suit them. This includes helping facilitate mentoring and advisory roles, providing access to business angel opportunities and making grants and donations.

Few private banks offer the breadth of services Coutts can with a full range of banking, investment and trust and tax services. This helps bankers to build a wealth strategy that meets the client's objectives - for example including asset leverage to achieve higher returns or tax efficiency. This also helps to identify opportunities that the client is missing because his or her advisers see only part of the picture (estate planning; insufficient life cover; making best use of a client's or client's spouse's non-domiciliary status).

Few investment houses offer, within one portfolio, the breadth of active, passive, specialist, capital protected notes, and hedge funds. Coutts' range of market access strategies allows bankers to build portfolios that can optimise cost effective investments into markets. Few private banks encourage their clients to examine the purpose of their various pockets of wealth, and help them determine the best allocation between them. Our investment proposition combines a strong focus on the clarity of investments with a more diverse investment strategy - with a heavy focus on overall asset allocation which will include exchange traded funds, actively managed and specialist funds (incl. hedge funds) and tracker funds.

Contact:

Miles Plumb
0121 607 8486
Miles.plumb@coutts.com
www.coutts.com/birmingham