Coutts has defended itself again claims that it denied wealthy clients the opportunity to pay for investment advice by a fee structure, rath...

Coutts has defended itself again claims that it denied wealthy clients the opportunity to pay for investment advice by a fee structure, rather than the more expensive commission-based charging process.

In an article in The Sunday Times, Britain's best known private bank was accused of not advising its clients to use fee-based structures, which were cheaper than commission-based pricing structures.

A spokesman for Coutts told WealthBriefing that the incident referred to in the article was a one-off occurrence. “We believe we have been entirely transparent. We don’t believe in putting people under the stopwatch when giving advice, and in the future we may give them more without an incremental fee.”

The article claimed that Coutts is out of line with most other private banks, which offer both fee and commission options.

The structure of charging for advice varies from firm to firm, but all must provide a range of market options to customers, in line the UK's Financial Services Authority’s rules on depolarisation.

The article referred to mis-selling which went on prior to the FSA’s new regime after depolarisation, and was often the result of advisors claiming to have independent status while they were in fact chasing the highest commissions. This in turn meant customers were not being given their full open market option.

“If people say they want to go down the fee paying route then we can do that,” added the spokesman.