We all know the names of the leading high street bank providers, but for HNWI (high net worth individuals), these banks might not always offer the best service or protection for their finances and wealth. Private banks offer a range of different services alongside traditional banking facilities, including wealth management, investment banking and portfolio management, typically aimed at a more exclusive level of clientele.
Coutts, one of the most renowned private banks in the world, offers such services to a range of high profile clients, including the Royal Family, and is one of the largest private banks. However, due to the potential to access lucrative assets, clients at private banks such as Coutts are becoming targets for a number of bank fraud schemes. Private bank fraud is on the rise and banks like Coutts are seeing an increase in both attempted and successful attacks on their customer’s accounts. With that in mind, let’s take a look at private bank fraud and how commonly these issues are affecting clients with private banks.
What Is A Private Bank?
Private banks offer a range of highly personalised financial services and products which are tailored towards high net worth individuals. Although private banks offer many of the traditional banking services you see with high street banks, most of them also offer specialised services geared towards their exclusive clientele, such as investment and trading portfolio management, insurance, trust and estate planning and tax advice.
Private banks also pair clients with teams within the bank who can handle all of their financial requirements and needs, private banking involves a higher level of relationship management and a deeper understanding of the financial needs of high net worth individuals. Private banking is associated with clients that have high incomes or high value assets, and most private bank providers either charge a fee or have a minimum account value to open a bank account with them.
How Does Private Banking Work?
Using a holistic approach towards finances, private banking combines traditional methods and offerings such as current accounts and saving strategies, but with a more personal and developed approach. Typically with private banks, a dedicated manager is assigned to each customer to handle all matters that the individual requires, which could range from mortgage management to paying outgoings or even creating investment strategies and planning for retirement.
Although it is possible to access some private banking functions, most will require a benchmark figure you need to hold, which ranges from having assets worth six figures or more to having at least a few million pounds to invest. Coutts, for example, require a minimum deposit requirement of £3 million.
How Is Fraud Affecting Private Banks?
Clients at private banks, including Coutts, are becoming more frequent targets for bank scammers because they are HNWI, so the fraudsters know that there are large amounts of money and assets sitting in accounts. Due to the close relationship that bankers and finance teams have with their clients, the scammers will also attempt numerous variations of phishing scams to impersonate those close to the account holder and gain access to their accounts.
Typically, private banking clients will make fewer transactions than traditional bank customers, however, the transactions will occur at a much higher average value. As well as this, HNWI may tend to invest or trade in cryptocurrency, with large or frequent deposits being made. As such, this makes them very attractive targets for criminals and crypto scammers.
Previously, there have been several high-profile fraud cases connected to Coutts which not only involved fraud, but fraud carried out by employees at the bank who targeted victims, so, understandably, private banks want to avoid further reputational damage. As Coutts is part of the Natwest banking family, they are under the CRM code and have a duty of care to help clients who have fallen victim to scams. We can help recover losses that occurred due to crypto scams, or more traditional bank scams, working with Coutts to get this secured for clients affected, where they may not be able to help.
Protecting Private Bank Accounts From Fraud
As with a range of other banking providers, one of the best ways you can protect your private bank account from fraud is to remain vigilant with your security practices. Private banks tend to implement more stringent security measures than traditional high street banks in order to protect their high profile clients, but this doesn’t always mean that they are effective.
We’ve worked with clients who have lost huge sums from their bank accounts as a result of a scam or fraudulent activity. It is often weaknesses in security which lead to the loss, or help to speed the fraudulent actions along.
Some ways in which you can protect your private bank account against fraud include:
- Ensure that your password is secure by using a mixture of numbers, letters and symbols. Try to avoid using the same password across multiple different accounts, or consider using a secure password manager.
- Never give your personal information or secure information to someone who contacts you claiming to be from your bank. Criminals carrying out private bank fraud will often use phishing techniques to harvest personal details from their victims, but your bank will unlikely ever send emails asking you to click links or share personal information online.
- At Coutts Bank, to avoid fraud, challenge words will be given out to clients and their dedicated account managers. If the person calling you cannot provide the challenge word, then hang up immediately. All calls with Coutts are recorded, so reach out to your banker for evidence of the call and to check if it was genuine.
Our Successes
We have had past success in helping clients recover funds lost through fraud and scam activity in their Coutts bank account. Our team recently helped one client recover £430,000, with no need for litigation and the money was returned to their account. With our no win, no fee approach to bank fraud recovery, including private bank fraud, we can help get your recovery process started.
What To Do If You Have Been The Victim Of Coutts or Private Bank Fraud
If you believe that you have been the victim of Coutts or other private bank fraud, then we may be able to recover your lost funds. We have a very high success rate in recovering funds that are untraceable, lost or stolen through bank fraud and we’re confident that our team can recover these funds. Contact WRS for a free consultation today, where we operate on a no win, no fee basis.
