Coutts, the largest constituent of Royal Bank of Scotland’s wealth management offering, has opened its 17th UK regional office, in the centr...

Coutts, the largest constituent of Royal Bank of Scotland’s wealth management offering, has opened its 17th UK regional office, in the centre of Milton Keynes, and has also announced its intention to open a further office in Chelmsford, Essex, early next year. Three further locations for new Coutts offices will be announced next year, according to a statement from the bank. The new Milton Keynes office will be headed up by Nigel Hawkins, who will lead a team of four private bankers, two of whom are transferring from Coutts’ Oxford office, one of whom joins from Lloyds TSB Private Bank and one who has yet to be recruited. Steve Hutchings joins the Milton Keynes office as a senior private banker, Helen Pattichis as a private banker and Richard Hallum, also as a private banker. “We were servicing the Milton Keynes area from the Oxford office, and were seeing the number of clients from the area growing,” Mr Hawkins told WealthBriefing. “We did a study of the growth of the Milton Keynes area in the last 10 years and projected it forward a further 10 years. This showed the huge potential for both the entrepreneurs and for the professionals that we are targeting with our offering,” he said. The Milton Keynes office will be targeting clients that fall within the standard Coutts criteria of £500,000 in investible assets or £5 million in fixed assets. The new office will open with around 10-12 staff, but 20 are planned for the next three years. This is the third wave of Coutts’ regional expansion plan, which has increased the numbers of private bankers working from its offices outside London by 60 per cent – in some cases doubling local teams. “We are delighted to be opening in Milton Keynes at the same time as announcing our intentions for Chelmsford. Since announcing our plans for Milton Keynes we have had nothing but positive feedback from the local professional community and we are looking forward to working more closely with them and our clients in the region,” said Sarah Deaves, Coutts chief executive. Recent research by Experian, for Coutts, suggests that both the M1 motorway corridor and Essex are havens for the millionaires of the future. Currently over 13,500 people along the M1 corridor are classed as “potential millionaires” and Essex is home to over 4,500, two-thirds of whom live in the Chelmsford area.