Coutts & Co. has joined the ranks of private banks who aim to look after the children of their wealthy clients. Claire Symonds, marketing communications manager for the bank, shared some insights with Paul McNamara
Coutts is one of the grand old dames of private banking and has been active in the Middle East for many years. Part of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, the bank manages the assets of over 98,000 clients worldwide.
With a history that dates back to 1692, the bank first assumed the name Coutts in 1755. The journey from there to here has been long and prosperous, but one in which the bank has continued to grow, develop and adapt to new market niches. This is manifest in the publication of a monthly magazine called CouttsWoman as well as the bank's recent attempts to help the children of their existing clients through offering tailored courses.
As we reported last month in Banker Middle East, there has been a growing trend among private banks around the globe to look after tomorrow's clients today. This has been evident in various initiatives aimed at teaching the children of a private bank's top clients how to cope with the reality of being rich.
Coutts, too, has an offering in this space called the Assets and Responsibilities Course, as Claire Symonds explained.
How long has the programme been going?
We have been doing unofficial courses for a long time but they have often been simply on a family basis where perhaps the parents have requested that their children have some kind of financial education from Coutts.
This year was the first time that we had a formal course where we had proper modules and guest speakers coming in. We had a total of around 50 people spread over two classes that were spread over one week. It was an intensive two and a half day course and was held at our head office in London.
What was the agenda for the course?
The modules covered not just personal finance but also personal branding and entrepreneurship. There are four modules to the course.
The first module is about financial awareness and covers things like spending, budgeting and saving. There was information about the City and what it does. We covered investing and had guest speakers come in. We had someone from the FT explain how to read the financial pages of the newspaper. Part of this included an investment game where the participants could put their money into different asset classes.
The second module looked at entrepreneurship and how to set up your own enterprise. We had young entrepreneurs come in and talk about their own experiences. The third module looked at assets and social responsibility and looked at charitable giving and how you might create a giving strategy.
The final module was on what we call 'human assets'. We gave one-to-one career advice. We talked about personal branding and reputational risk.
The idea behind the course was to help to educate but also to try to motivate them. Many of the children on the course were incredibly motivated about becoming successful in their own right. It gave them a great heads up on how they might set up their own business and manage their own money.
Can you explain what personal branding means in this context?
This concerns how to present yourself. In a business situation, how to appear confident, how to get things done, how to dress. We had a guest speaker who gave a presentation on how the way we talk affects people's perception of us, the impact of body language and so on.
What age groups were the delegates?
They were 17 to 23 years of age. We were aiming to get them at an age where they had a little bit of awareness and they were at the stage where they were trying to establish what they will be doing next. They may be just heading off to university or have just graduated and are getting involved in the family business.
How much variation was there in the levels of sophistication of the children?
There were certainly different levels within the group and there were different attitudes within the groups. The first course was slightly younger and they were very interested in philanthropy and they wanted to learn how they were going to give away money.
The older group connected with this less because they were at the stage where they were starting to earn their own money. Most of them are not in the position where they simply have everything handed to them on a plate. They truly appreciated the value of what it was that they were earning and so they were not yet at the point where they had to consider how they were going to give it away. They were in the wealth-building phase.
There was also a difference between what the parents wanted and what the children wanted from the course, which is perhaps not surprising. The parents were very focused on the financial side whereas the children were more interested in the philanthropy and entrepreneurship side of things.
Who did you need to convince of the need for the course? The parents or the children?
We decided to do it in the first place because there was an obvious demand from parents. They felt that they needed something that was going to help their children in a way that they could not get in schools. Also when you are very wealthy there is a different level of financial education that is needed. We filled the places very quickly and we already have a number of people interested in the course that we will be running next year and that is before we have planned dates or anything.
We certainly did not have to convince the parents, and the children that came along were very enthusiastic. They really felt that they learned something from it. There is a stereotypical image of a rich kid but we were very pleasantly surprised by the children who came along.
Those children whose parents had built the wealth themselves, which was the majority, were incredibly motivated to do the same and live up to that themselves.
How did you go about choosing who would come along to the course?
We had a limited number of places but we had already spoken to a number of parents while the programme was being developed. We simply put it out there and asked the parents to register their interest so we started with a good base.
Equally we had some press coverage around this time and that prompted more to call and request a place for their children. Indeed a number of parents have requested that next time we hold a more advanced course.
Will this become an annual event?
That is the plan at present. We are planning to have the next one next summer. Whether it will then become more frequent we don't yet know since this one was just a pilot.
© Banker Middle East 2007
