Coutts Bank?

[GardenTrees]

Does anyone bank with Coutts (or another private bank) or knows what they offer?

if I had a spare £1,000,000 in cash for example, I might want to invest, or keep it in cash etc

What do Coutts offer that high street banks don’t?
What’s the advantage to private banking?
and what’s the difference between a truly private bank (like an old school family bank) and a big street bank that offers private banking (e.g HSBC)

Just pondering as I may have a large lump sum headed my way.

My partner banks with Cater Allen, it's the privacy for him. Maybe Martin Lewis would help

We bank with Coutts - it's a very high touch and personal service. Think 24hr person answering the phone quickly and dealing with you without any of the gaffers of other bank customer service. They've stopped their concierge service recently (think tickets to events, tables at v popular restaurants) - but we never used it any way. But I would go to my IFA with the £1mln for advice and not Coutts.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jul/28/im-secretly-a-coutts-customer-but-for-people-like-me-theres-little-point
This might be interesting

I think unless you're planning to buy a property in the next 2-3 years or need the capital for a business, it's probably unwise to keep that amount of money in cash.

It's also likely that the main advantage of private banks is the personal service, plus a feeling that you have something that few people can afford. Only you can decide whether that's worth it for you.

You'd probably be best talking to an independent financial adviser/planner about what's best to do with the money as they need to do a full fact find about your overall financial and personal circumstances, attitude to risk and wants/needs for the money.

But in the short term, you can just put the money in any bank that pays decent interest - there's an exemption for 6 months if it's due to a qualifying 'life changing' event, ie property sale or inheritance from the £85k limit for savings protection. Or you can put it in National Savings as that's fully backed by the government. But also look out for maximum limits on interest paid - it's worth understanding this properly as £1M in a savings account could earn £40k+ pa in interest, so you could lose out on a significant sum if you leave it in a crap paying current account for any length of time.

One of the high street banks require a minimum of £100k for their premier account. It offers some benefits but is nothing fancy and their staff who are allocated to premier customers are not always well trained.

This makes me wonder what the minimum deposit for a private bank would be and how much regular payments in would need to be.

Bearing in mind your money has no more protection if the bank goes bust than the standard £85k you’d get from a small regional building society.

If nothing else you don't want to be depositung >£85k in one institution

Cater Allen is commonly used by IT contractors - Coutts is really in a completely different league to them.
Cater Allen did have very good customer service when I banked with them though.

For me, it’s the ease and the customer service. You’re never hanging on the phone for hours only to be transferred to someone else and then someone else. You just call, your relationship manager picks up the phone and they either help you directly or introduce you to someone else. There are other benefits which are quite nice like free airport lounges, mobile phone insurance, they will help choose/ book a holiday etc. oh!! And they send you a box of chocolates at Christmas 🤣

If you want to be able to phone up and talk to an actual person straight away who knows what they're doing, First Direct offer that to everyone for free and consistently come top of customer service surveys.

Security is sensible as in they ask you questions you will be able to answer not obscure facts about family history such as the name of your paternal grandfather's first cousin's dog or what your favourite primary school teacher wore on your 8th birthday.

I don't know if they do any special accounts for rich people or that pay a decent amount of interest though.

Officially, you need to maintain a minimum £1m in investments or borrowing or £3m in cash at Coutts, or if you have less, they think there will be opportunity for you to transfer more of your wealth to them at some point in the near future.

The main advantage is the personal service, with access to your Private Banker and their team, and 24/7 human support, though this is true of many Private Banks.

Ultimately, they want to deal with High Net Worth and Ultra High Net Worth clients, and many of their clients have their wealth spread about all over the place - as with all Private Banks, the bottom line is how much you are 'worth' to them. They want to offer you a mortgage, investments, wealth planning services etc. and U/HNW clients are willing to pay for that.

Interest rates are poor or non-existent on accounts, and if you 'only' have £1m in cash then unless you are looking to invest it with them, you would be better off elsewhere.