I would assume that HSBC Private Bank would give you Premier status, so you get to enjoy all of the Premier benefits aside from the Private Banking ecosystem?
If you’re that rich and HSBC Private Bank doesn’t give you the Premier benefits, what stops just putting money aside to get a Premier account with the retail side? Saving £100k in a high street bank to get when you have over £1.5m already seems quite easy to do.
Or maybe that’s no possible and I’m talking nonsense 
You are exactly right. That’s how I obtained HSBC Premier.
I telephoned my PB manager at HSBC and said I have money sitting around, if I deposit x amount can I open up a HSBC Premier account.
Naturally there was no issues and here we are.
Excluding property holdings and hard assets (eg your classic car collection), what % roughly of your net worth is in, respectively
Maybe 70% off the top of my head.
I know for certain out of that 70%, 10% of it goes to a charity.
Currently have about £45K invested in bottles of wine, some at my home some held with a wine merchant. Majority are pre 1999, a couple of Louis Roderer’s in there (oldest being 1990 when I joined Coutts) and a few Pauillac magnum bottles.
And in excess of £100K in classic cars and watches.
That’s just an insight, I discuss anything but there you have it.
Yes I have trusts etc. It’s about forty pages in thickness and there are dedicated trust accounts at different financial institutions to deal with this side of things.
Could we see some of your cards?
Very interesting, thanks.
So only 30% ish of your net worth is in properties+other hard assets. I remember reading somewhere that for “simple” HNW individuals/households, that percentage is closer or above 50%. So you must be UHNW.
7% of your net worth given to charities is quite good, quick googling The Forbes Philanthropy Score 2023: How Charitable Are The Richest Americans? says the average is less than 6% so you are above that.
Thanks for the £ hard numbers but I cannot make anything useful out of them without a lot more context that you obviously can’t provide. And I assume 45k and 100k are nearly rounding errors for you…? (but the assets are definitely very impressive!). I will hazard that your properties could be worth £10m -net of debt of course-, so your total net worth could be ~ £30-35mil ish, so £100k would be definitely a rounding error…
Apart from the 10% (of the 70% non-real estate non-hard asset) charity giving, you haven’t given the % for the other big categories (pensions, ISA, trusts, liquid investments). It’s the percentages that interest me, not the hard numbers, as I am curious to know what a UHNW would consider as sound asset allocation.
Thanks again for all this info.
Do you not have a Coutts card in your collection already? 
I don’t no. My dad does.
I can see if he will send me a pic of it
No you don’t for the most part. You can have a separate premier account and get all the premier benefits. Maybe it’s possible to set up fee waiver although I haven’t tried.
International premier account opening etc. will be routed through the premier side (as mentioned there is no broadly applicable global HSBC private banking relationship but rather limited booking centres). Private bank will not get involved if you can’t get a credit card from premier or if you get locked out of your online banking. In fact you could get turned down by HSBC personal banking despite being a PB customer.
Well if needed the state can simply ask the Bank of England to extend it’s overdraft, which it has to do, however inflation would be a real concern if NS and I went bust
Lots of reasons, your cash may be tied up in non-liquid investments like Private Equity or Infra. The market may be crashing so you don’t want to sell you public portfolio etc.
Also there are some tax benefits, for example the reason why Bezos famously has a base salary of just $81,840. He will then organise a line of credit secured against his shares in Amazon and thus doesn’t pay tax as it’s not income. Indeed depending on the type of debt he borrows he may be able to claim the interest against his tax return.
Does anyone know if Coutts offer execution-only investment services, or do you have to use their prebuilt ‘Coutts Invest’ portfolios or advisory services?
Also do they have an online share brokering platform or do you need to call them or something?
Maybe this is the cheapest “Private Banking” (at least by name) in the UK?
Alpha Bank. The minimum amount required in order to open a Personal Current Account is £100,000 if the deposit is in GBP.
A slight insight to the private bank life for everyone here, for those asking is it worth the fees etc.
I used the Coutts24 concierge to book a special meal this week.
Concierge arranged a great meal in London. Upon arriving at the restaurant we recieved a warm welcome and upon providing my details was informed “oh yes, we’ve been expecting you Mr x. Your bank has arranged for your usual table and a special gift”.
As we arrived at our table we had a courtesy bottle of champers already on ice. Maitre d passed comment “courtesy of Mr X at Coutts” (Mr X being my private bank manager for contents).
Meal was outstanding , great atmosphere and general aurora of the establishment.
I don’t often deal with the concierge but for special meals etc they certainly go above and beyond.
I would have expected Mr X at Coutts to come and pour the champagne for you. Very poor service, in my opinion. I’ll stick to HSBC.
What are the annual fees, out of interest? I don’t think it’s something I will ever be eligible to discover, sadly. I am intrigued though.
If only, although I’m meeting them for a “catchup” lunch in December. They’ll come to meet with me at my members club (London based) it’s usually a good occasion. Last meeting before the New Year.
We pay £900 for each sole account. No fees for joint accounts, as we both already have existing relationships with the bank.
For commercial banking I’m not sure, as for my company (law firm) the free structure is different as we hold third party funds etc.
No fee for the silk charge card either.
You’re Prince Harry, aren’t you.
Ahah no not quite.
I got introduced there by a fellow member and I certainly pay the price to stay as a member.
I know that a few people in this chat have got some Private Cards.
I think that some of us would love to see the designs of the cards. Could we maybe see a few?
I personally would love to see the AMEX Centurion and Coutts Charge.
Especially for the card number, expiry date and cvv? 