The platform includes articles and detailed reports from institutions such as the Family Firm Institute for family business content and Alliance for philanthropy content. The service is exclusively for Coutts' clients and will be extended in 2012 to its international clients with added modules in the first quarter.

The private bank said it recognised the need to put education at the forefront of its client relationships.

Coutts has already moved to educate the offspring of its clients by holding education programmes for young people during the summer in recent years. The strategy touches on the need by private banks to retain the custom of the "next generation".

A recent study by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini showed that wealth advisors around the world on average lose almost half of assets (49 per cent) during generational wealth transfers, which makes it all the more significant that the proportion of younger HNW individuals is rising.

In 2010, some 17 per cent of all such individuals were 45 years old or younger, up from 13 per cent in 2008. The share of women among HNW individuals is also rising, at 27 per cent, up from 24 per cent two years before, the report said.