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This is one of the most exclusive banks in the world, counting the British Royal Family among their notable clients, and they can't even be bothered to keep the

• pid-1 4y ago
  That's not a lot for a wealth managament firm.
  • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > not a lot for a wealth managament firm Not sure why downvoted. Many private banks have $1 to 10mm minimums.
    • Symbiote 4y ago
      It was 21 years ago. The figure on the website now is £1M.
      • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > figure on the website now is £1M OP’s point still stands. That’s middle of ground for a private bank. Far from “most exclusive.”
        • mytailorisrich 4y ago
          I don't think this is the sort of bank where you can just show up with 1m and the staff will bend over backwards to open your account. For instance, if the Royal family banks there it means they think the bank will never ever make headlines for the wrong reasons or at all.
          • jquery 4y ago
            It just made the headlines for the wrong reason…
            • kube-system 4y ago
              “The headlines” typically refer to coverage in a mainstream publication, not a post on HN.
          • qzw 4y ago
            Right, because the Royal Family themselves never ever make headlines for the wrong reasons.
        • RC_ITR 4y ago
          In practice, if you’re over 40, the limit is closer to $5-10m USD at anywhere good, but the idea of banks being “exclusive” is sort of out of date. Anyone will take your cash if there’s enough of it.
          • qzw 4y ago
            Proof of stake before it was cool.
    • ricardobeat 4y ago
      £500k in 2001 was ~720k USD, or, adjusted for inflation, $1.2 million in todays money.
  • boringg 4y ago
    I'd agree with you - that's barely exclusive in the world of exclusive fund management. It's table stakes.
• discordance 4y ago
  What unique services does a bank like this offer it’s clients?
  • pdpi 4y ago
    First thing that comes to mind is that a bank like this is probably going to have a much better developed wealth management offering than mainstream commercial banks. The sort that helps you diversify into art rather than real estate, sort of thing.
  • hh3k0 4y ago
    For starters, you won't run into any of those poors when visiting one of their branches.
    • Crosseye_Jack 4y ago
      Well with the number of branch closures (atleast here in the UK) that is becoming an non-issue for everyone :-p
  • vultour 4y ago
    The warm feeling that they don’t waste time dealing with the peasants.
  • gambiting 4y ago
    Well, not on the same level, but my dad used to have an account with a small bank in our town, and as a business owner he could literally walk in and speak to the owner of the bank within 10 minutes tops. Any issues with his accounts or international payments, there was an employee(usually the same one) looking into it personally. It was just a lot more personal service than any large bank could ever offer. I imagine this is exactly the same, just on a bigger scale.
    • TigeriusKirk 4y ago
      Growing up, a friend's dad ran a couple of fast food franchises. As teenagers, we talked a lot to the dad about his business, and he was more than happy to impart his business wisdom on youngsters. Anyway, he told us he banked with the local bank in town rather than any of the regional or national banks for just that reason. He could walk in and talk to the top guy whenever he wanted. The top guy understood his financial situation completely, and would easily make arrangements the big banks would take weeks to make, if ever. My brother did the same thing when he started his businesses, and I've moved to it over time. It's hard to beat talking to a banker who understands what you're doing and is actually there to help you.
• Naomarik 4y ago
  Completely fooled me. Looks like a poorly made sign up funnel site.
• JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > they can't even be bothered to keep their mobile app up to date Guessing their clients aren’t banking via mobile apps, their staff having lines to their banker. Most top-tier private banks barely have an online presence. If you want something, you (or your assistant) calls or texts your banker.
  • thro388 4y ago
    This is so true. Try to bank in Switzerland, it is so 1980ties...
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • toomuchtodo 4y ago
      BNY Mellon also. You ring your wealth manager.
      • ghaff 4y ago
        The wealth management arm of a bank can simultaneously have managers with clients and sane online systems. Some people will want to do everything over the phone and/or in-person. Others will still want the personal touch while also wanting all the usual online access--possibly including mobile (though this tends to be less relevant with wealth management accounts).
    • pipeline_peak 4y ago
      nineteen eighty-ties? Edit: 5 downvotes, tough crowd
    • hiq 4y ago
      > Try to bank in Switzerland, it is so 1980ties... What do you mean by that? In a way it's not retro enough (for me?), I currently have an account that can only be accessed via a mobile app (e.g. no website). See for instance https://www.neon-free.ch/en/ https://www.neon-free.ch/en/ You can open an account fully online from your home, I don't think you even have to mail anything.
• anothernewdude 4y ago
  > they can't even be bothered to keep their mobile app up to date. In the face of Apple's app store bullshit, I completely understand. Apple regularly shit the bed in getting apps updated. Frankly the wheels have come off their 'premium' branding a while back.
  • ben_w 4y ago
    Apple is “premium” in the category of “people who work for a living”, which is not necessarily the same as premium in the category “the face of one of our customers is printed on everyone else’s money”.
• mytailorisrich 4y ago
  I suspect their customers are people who want personalised and personal service, and sound financial advice and investment opportunities. If they wanted an app-based fintech they could have instantly opened an account with the many available companies in the field, and maybe they also have, but obviously that is not what Coutts is about.
• api 4y ago
  I'm sure the consultants they pay to maintain the app cost more to churn out just one version than the entire budget of most mobile app startup companies for the first three years.
  • londons_explore 4y ago
    I know the team that made this app. It's low price labor who cobble together Java... It will be just as terrible an experience to use as any other 'old tech' banking app.
• FredPret 4y ago
  There are people that got rich any number of ways. Many on this forum are rich through technology. Also, rich people are much more familiar with ongoing asset maintenance costs than the average person, having more assets to maintain. Coutts probably doesn’t interact with its clients primarily through the app. I bet it’s mostly direct calls/texts between bankers and clients.
• andy_ppp 4y ago
  The whole of British society is structured this way. Constantly blaming poor people when a good proportion of rich people are rent seeking and/or not doing the most basic things to help their customers.
  • ttul 4y ago
    Ahh yes, but by being careful stewards of their wealth, they ensure that the British economy is productive and healthy /s
    • ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      Because all their wealth trickes down eventually. Any moment now... /s
  • nus07 4y ago
    It’s no different from Reagan Republicans. All the rules are for thee(the poor) but not for me(the wealthy).
    • zdragnar 4y ago
      Funny, that's what all the Republicans kept saying about the Democratic politicians like Newsom who were seen flouting their own COVID lockdown policies. Maybe it's more than just one tiny group of people who are prone to such things as hypocrisy.
  • prepend 4y ago
    Aren’t the royals literally rent seeking by renting out ancestral lands? Seems like a good thing to nationalize and use for better public good.
    • jfengel 4y ago
      Most of it is administered by the government and the government manages the profits. It is ultimately His Majesty's government. The royal family gets some of it in their personal coffers, and it's a nontrivial sum, but it wouldn't fix the UK's financial problems all in one swoop to take it. And it would come at a cost of a significant amount of prestige and tourism dollars. It might be a net gain, but most people in the UK feel that it wouldn't be worth the cost to their nation identity. Many in the UK want the opposite of nationalization. They want to sell off major government properties to private owners, and let capitalism do the work. This isn't quite a majority opinion but it has strong support (and bitter opposition).
• kennend3 4y ago
  What I find interesting is you think the ultra-rich do their own banking? They are not paying assistants and accountants so they can do mundane tasks like login to a banking site and pay a bill.
  • tomrod 4y ago
    Not at 500k. Exclusive private offices start making financial sense in the 160M to 200M range. There are shared private offices below that, but this* gets nebulous with asset management and such. Edit: thst -> this. Mobile autocorrects the wrong "correction"
    • kennend3 4y ago
      as someone posted, 500K was like 20 years ago.. it is now a million dollars. and no one said they have 'exclusive accountants'. There are accounting services where you pay them for a few days work and they take care of all your bills for you. I've only met one multi-billionaire in my life and can assure you that he has never seen his bills, let alone pay them. He doesnt even own a smart phone, because he has assistants who handle most of that for him allowing him to focus on one thing - making money.
      • junofan 4y ago
        The comment you’re responding to is talking about family offices.
      • jquery 4y ago
        So basically he doesn’t even enjoy his money except as a means to make more money. Sounds like a hunger curse.
        • tomrod 4y ago
          To have such problems.
          • 4y ago
• melling 4y ago
  Isn’t this more of a banking, or even corporate, culture? Our IT group needs a year to “upgrade and test” our applications. I remember the “we only need to support Internet Explorer” days. Testing on Chrome and Firefox wasn’t important.
  • Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    I remember the "Everyone uses Chrome or Firefox, but we need to still support Internet Explorer" days. Because so much software was IE-only, and IE 6 at that, companies had a hard time updating.
• smugma 4y ago
  A friend is a Director at Apple and banks with Coutts. Just because your bank is shitty in some ways doesn’t mean you don’t care about technology. My bank (First Republic) caters to richer people, and has had shitty website features in the past. It’s all outsourced to Intuit, I think. But overall it’s a great bank. I care a lot about technology but don’t make all life decisions based on it. One I did make is refuse to buy a car in 2017 (Mini Cooper) that didn’t have CarPlay (I bought a GTI instead).
  • thr0wawayf00 4y ago
    To clarify, I wasn't trying to say that individuals who bank with Coutts don't care about technology. The point I'm trying to make is that this is a clear example of an institution that has the means to afford a mobile app and they just choose not to perform basic maintenance, which is one of the biggest and most frequent complaints that I see around the industry. People love to be marketed to and sold the promises of amazing technology that can do extraordinary things, but nobody wants to pay for it. And if you're a company that wants a mobile app as part of your business, then you need to understand that you gotta pay to maintain it. There's no excuse for a bank like this to skip out on app maintenance. If the wealthiest among us can't understand this, what does it say about our decision to transition towards a more technology-reliant society?
• SilasX 4y ago
  Interesting how you don’t frame it as “Apple can’t be bothered to maintain APIs and avoidably forces everyone to rewrite everything to save them the effort”.
  • CharlesW 4y ago
    It’s not framed that way because that’s not what’s happening here.
    • SilasX 4y ago
      Loss of OS API compatibility isn't a reason that app developers have to keep "maintaining" their apps? >>>This is one of the most exclusive banks in the world ... and they can't even be bothered to keep their mobile app up to date.
• rco8786 4y ago
  That’s quite a jump there. One bank is bad at maintaining their app all the way to a blanket statement about rich people and technology.
  • sweetheart 4y ago
    • raunak 4y ago
      It’s ironic he’s been here since 2010 and me and you are actually new here.
  • tialaramex 4y ago
    I'd definitely have gone to banks are terrible at IT rather than rich people. I am not a rich person, although I'm comfortable, but several of my banks are terrible at IT. Like "We are upgrading our web site so it won't be available until Tuesday" level bad at IT. Note that wasn't just "Some services won't be available", the whole web site was out of action for most of a day. It's disappointing but understandable if I can't send a random stranger 2500 ¥ at 2am because the bank are upgrading something. But it's straight up crazy that I can't even see my 2018 bank statement PDF because they're upgrading, it's the sort of feature a PHP Blog site can make work.
    • jacobn 4y ago
      Ironically the PHP blog site may have gotten a lot more engineering TLC than the bank’s IT system. Not necessarily more hours or $$ spent on it, but more care.
    • dehrmann 4y ago
      > We are upgrading our web site so it won't be available until Tuesday I envy this sometimes. It takes a lot more work to evolve a system with zero downtime.
      • 4y ago
• isodev 4y ago
  My bank, too, has been struggling with app updates to the point that sometimes I can’t accomplish a simple task like checking my credit card transactions. It’s so infuriating that companies in particular (let’s say critical) domains are allowed to reach rock bottom levels of app quality. As a consumer, this is a horrible position to be in - changing banks is not straightforward, and the alternatives are not much better.
• traceroute66 4y ago
  > This is one of the most exclusive banks in the world Not particularly exclusive, bought by NatWest in 2000 and then taken over by Ernst & Cie. So its little more than a brand-name these days, you can effectively buy your way in. If you want truly exclusive, you have to cross the road and walk a bit further down the Strand to Fleet Street. Regarding Private Banks and the online world, yes they tend to be a bit further behind the bleeding edge. But then if one can call up one's relationship manager who recognises one by voice without the need for tiresome security questions, then one might understand why expenditure on one's bank's online services is a secondary priority.
  • Cederfjard 4y ago
    > If you want truly exclusive, you have to cross the road and walk a bit further down the Strand to Fleet Street. So if you can’t “buy your way in” to these banks, what are the criteria?
    • traceroute66 4y ago
      > So if you can’t “buy your way in” to these banks, what are the criteria? First you will need to be "introduced" to the bank by an existing customer. We're not talking about a referral link here, we're saying who introduces you is just as important as who is being introduced (i.e. long-standing customer vouching for an introduction gets more weight than a newbie trying to get a mate in). Second, if the introduction is acceptable, then you will be invited to a meeting with one or more members of the bank's senior management to determine if you are a good fit (and no, "good fit" does not equal a commercial fit about determining how much they can sell you, its a "good fit" as in determining that you have your head screwed on and won't cause the bank problems). You might think this is excessive, but at the most exclusive bank the management have genuine skin in the game (e.g. bank is purposely setup as unlimited liability legal structure, so if management were to ever fuck up, they really would FUCK UP because they have no corporate veil to hide behind). It also means that dodgy overseas money and the nouveau riche can't buy their way in and start causing problems. A truly exclusive bank values quality of client over quantity of clients.
• onetokeoverthe 4y ago