Diary of a private banker

Coutts & Co prefers clients to come knocking on its doors when they have at least £1 million of net worth, and ideally much, much higher; £10 million plus really starts to get you the red carpet treatment.

Good god, I am still recovering from a raucous party earlier this week with all our old friends.

The use of the net promoter score, a metric for measuring whether clients would recommend the institution concerned to friends and family, is growing across private banking.

I have always advised anyone who wished to be a banker, at all costs to be a private banker and so deal with a customer base you would not be ashamed of inviting round for dinner or to meet your mother-in-law.

We all know about Paul the Apostle, who on the road to Damascus decided to stop persecuting people and instead become a follower of Christ.

Your full support, please chums, for Sir John Royden of JM Finn, who will bravely attempt to become the eighth person ever to swim the 43 miles of Lake Geneva.

C Hoare can boast of an illustrious list of clients, from Samuel Pepys to Jane Austin over the centuries.

When you are nigh on 350 years old, adherence to tradition and custom can perhaps leave you a little creaky when it comes to adopting today’s à la mode private banking practices. Image: Elliott Brown

Listen to current private banking scuttle-buck, and it would appear that Brown Shipley has suffered an unsettling and steady haemorrhage of talent.

Loyalty to one’s clients is a quality which is to be much admired in private banking. When clients respond with equal fidelity, then extremely long-lived and productive relationships can be formed. Image credit: The Open University