Since my appointment as chief executive of Coutts & Co over twelve months ago, we have set as our principal goal to be as admired for our intelligent investment advice as we are for our banking and credit services. I’d like to tell you why Coutts should be considered by those looking for a full wealth management solution.
Our biggest focus is to increase awareness of our investment expertise. Coutts has always had a strong investment proposition, which we’ve grown further under global co-chief investment officers, Gayle Schumacher and Nick Cringle, adding to the considerable expertise we already had there.
Members of the investment management team have visited many of our offices to talk to clients about our investment offerings, both discretionary and advisory, and we are adding highly-experienced investment consultants to our client-facing teams. Their role will be to work with our private bankers and financial planners to enable us to talk to clients about both sides of the personal balance sheet.
We’ve also utilised our website to get the Coutts investment view into the market-place by launching regular bulletins on a range of investment topics. Please do take a look and subscribe to receive them.
We are making a significant investment in a new IT platform that will give private bankers easier accessibility to management information so freeing up more time for them to give even more attention to their clients. This is planned to be launched next year and we will talk more about this exciting project in a future issue of Professional’s Perspective .
Of course, at the heart of the way we conduct our business is the rapport that we build with our clients. As you would expect, we continue to focus on building good client relationships as we believe that this is the right model for the high net worth market. The private banker plays a central role in this and is able to draw upon the support of experts in various fields, such as financial planning and investments, to provide a broad range of wealth solutions. And it is this approach that we believe can help you, our introducers. With just one point of contact, our private banker can call upon experts to work with you in meeting your clients’ needs. We believe that collaboration is the key to achieving the best for the high net worth sector which we both serve.
Our commercial banking division has been looking after businesses for most of our 300-year history, with many connections going back over two centuries. Much has been made in the media in recent months about bank lending to SMEs. We are very much open for business and looking to grow our commercial division.
Coutts is well positioned, with a strong balance sheet and a sound, highly liquid, deposit-led business model with a deposit base that is currently more than twice the size of our lending book. With a history of prudent lending, growth is very much on the agenda. Again, we will talk in greater depth about our commercial proposition in the future. In the meantime, please visit our website where you can watch a short film about how Coutts can help businesses .
I hope that I have given you at least a flavour of what Coutts has to offer. If you want to learn more about us, our products and services, please talk to your contact point at Coutts. I would like to reiterate the value we place on the relationships that we have with our introducers, which we would very much like to build upon.