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EXCLUSIVE: Coutts Private Office re-launches today as Coutts Family Office

Will Sidery, 27/01/2021

Coutts has refreshed and re-launched its service for ultra-high-net worth families, re-branding the Coutts Private Office to The Coutts Family Office.

The UK wealth manager and private bank says the new service will continue to offer the “deep capability” of Coutts but work closely with divisions of the wider NatWest Group and selected external partners to create an “enviable breadth of service” that supports the creation of a client’s own family office within Coutts.

Warren Thompson, Coutts’ head of family office & UHNW has led the business since 2014 and will continue to lead through this next stage. He told eprivateclient that the revamp was based on feedback from clients and from taking a step back and recognising the evolution of the Coutts service.

Warren Thompson, Coutts’ head of family office & UHNW

“It is a real privilege to be a truly central partner to most of the families we look after. The more we spoke to our clients, analysed what services we provide for them and investigated how we can improve them further, the more we realised that the business has evolved to most closely resemble a multi-family office itself,” he said.

“Therefore, the re-branding of the business feels quite natural and represents the ever-increasing breadth capabilities we bring to our clients.”

Coutts’ UHNW business was set up in 2005 and has evolved into a service where the bank partners with wealthy families on “pretty much every aspect of their lives”, Mr Thompson said.

It was, he added, “for all those reasons we wanted to rebrand from what we had been since 2005 and have an appropriate title which better embodies the warmth of our team and the focus on what can mean different things to different people but is ultimately what everyone cares about the most - family.”

Mr Thompson said that in order to provide this type of service a firm “needs to offer a breadth of capabilities” and that “Coutts’ family office is completely different from many others” as the three-centuries-old wealth manager and private bank has its “own investment platform, concierge services, philanthropic team and the ability to bank and lend - which we do brilliantly”.

A core part of the rebrand, however, was also further expanding the capabilities by combining partnerships from within the wider NatWest Group with best-in-class external relationships under the one ‘Family Office’ offering.

This means that Coutts Family Office also has the ability to support on areas such as marine, aviation and automotive commodities and finance those through its partnership with Lombard as well as utilise an in-house advisory team powered by NatWest’s Mentor, white-labelled for Coutts as Family Office at Home – which can provide HR support.

Mr Thompson said that Coutts was investing in the business and recruiting more people to look after the 275 families it currently advises, a number which Mr Thompson said the bank was “gearing up to grow that even more.”

“Innovation and partnerships are very much at our core of our offer, which is why clients benefit from a huge range of services and not only strong and consistent investment returns - though that is obviously fundamental to what we do. Clients benefit from the unique direct investment opportunities we provide, the lifestyle, concierge and property finding advice available and our philanthropic and wealth structuring services, not to mention being connected to our remarkable network of clients.” Mr Thompson said.

“Some clients like the independence of MFOs or prefer to set up their own family office”, Mr Thompson continued, “but other clients want the stability of a 329 year old institution that has the backing, strength and capability of the NatWest Group and is very comfortable working collaboratively with families existing advisers such as lawyers and accountants.”

“Ultimately, under our new name with our revised proposition, we are even better positioned to be whatever our clients need us to be. That is the unique capability of a Coutts Family Office.” Mr Thompson added.

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