The Queen’s bank Coutts might be 328 years old but under the helm of its CEO Peter Flavel it’s moving with the times.
In the four years since the Aussie took over as CEO of this well-known institution, Coutts has invested in its digital platform, is selling more products to more customers and is engaging with a more diverse set of clients.
Just to put the business into context in 2020, Flavel tells me of two client events Coutts hosted in London last year.
The first was an event it held for 350 landowners - mostly men and mostly donning pinstripe suits. A few days later it held another event for 250 e-gamers - two very different clienteles but both representing important parts of the business today.
“When people think of Coutts they think of traditional wealth such as landowners and estates and of course that’s part of what we’ve done for a long period of time, and still is, yet what is surprising to most people is the number of entrepreneurs that bank with us,” says Flavel.
“We are now banking YouTubers, e-gamers, and social influencers.
“When we market to those groups, sometimes they know of Coutts and know of it as the Queen’s bank and have a view of it as a result.
“Quite often I talk with clients after they’ve come into the bank and it’s quite common for them to say ‘actually this is quite different to what I expected.’ There’s a perception that it’s going to be stiff and proper but it’s actually warm, welcoming, friendly and very family orientated.”
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There are 20,000 entrepreneurs banking with Coutts and in Manchester and the wider north west, 80 per cent of its clients here are entrepreneurs.
The bank helps entrepreneurs with working capital to grow their businesses, buy their home and even perhaps their dream home as their wealth grows.
It then helps to pass on that wealth to their family, or do a trade sale, at which point Coutts gets involved with their philanthropy as well.
Flavel says: “We’re here for our clients for their lifetime as they grow their wealth to helping them exit a business which is a long process and is not something that happens overnight.
“As such we hold a number of events so we can talk about things clients need to consider in terms of inheritance tax and so forth and the meaning of wealth for their children.
“But it’s also about clients talking to other clients who have been through that process - we found over the years that that has been a huge benefit.”
Life after exit is also an important element for the bank as clients explore what to do with their wealth.
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“We have a number of entrepreneurial clients that have focused on one business and quite often they have spent 20 or so years building up that business and it’s been the life of that family.
“So what does life mean when they sell? Again, we host events where we bring in clients who have been through that very process and we do work around philanthropy with that.
“Philanthropy is a huge part of our heritage. The bank is named after Thomas Coutts and his granddaughter Angela Burdett-Coutts inherited her grandfather’s fortune.
“She was really the first great British philanthropist and that’s been a big part of what we do as a business.
“So particularly for entrepreneurs it’s been about what is the meaning of wealth, how do they want to pass that wealth on and how do they think about philanthropy.
“And actually talking to other people who have been through that very same path is enormously powerful.
“We loosely call it the ‘Coutts club’, so that when you become a client of the bank, you get all that wonderful services that Coutts provides, but the thing that clients really value is the linkages they get to other clients of the bank.”
Flavel became the first non-Brit CEO of Coutts, which is owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland group, in 2016 having joined the establishment after stints running the private bank at Standard Chartered and heading JPMorgan’s private wealth business in Asia.
Asked what it was that made him decide to leave Asia for the 海角视频, he says he was impressed with RBS’ CEO Alison Rose, who he had met a few years ago.
Talking about Coutts in 2020 and how he has taken it into the modern age, Flavel says: “I’ve been here for four years and before I arrived I thought we’ll build up the digital side and more people will move to digital but what we’re finding is actually that people like the human contact of talking to someone, they like the personal touch that we offer as well as the digital offering, which is why we launched Coutts 24.”
“Increasingly we are talking to clients outside of hours. A lot of clients are busy so many aren’t free to talk to someone until 7 or 8 in the evening and they want to speak to someone that is senior and is doing client service over the phone.”
He continued: “We need to nurture and nourish our heritage because the heritage and brand is fantastic but we also need to be modern and contemporary for today as we appeal to a broader client base and one that’s not solely focused in London, but also in places and cities such as Manchester.
“We are constantly talking to new and different types of clients and we are making sure that Coutts is relevant to both traditional wealth and new forms of wealth.”