ON ONE recent estimate, the number of people in the UK with more than £200,000 in free assets will top one million next year.

Little wonder that one of our fastest-growing industries is wealth management. But where Coutts, Hoare and Child were the automatic repositories for the cash of Britain’s aristocracy in the past, the new rich can choose from a range of advisers as entrepre-neurial as themselves.

A mere £200,000 may not buy you a ticket into this exclusive club, but even big names, such as UBS and Merrill Lynch, will take you on if you have half a million to spare. Merrill has been beefing up its UK wealth-management business recently. Nick Tucker, head of global private clients, says that it is conscious that big banks can be seen as bureaucratic and impersonal and it is working hard to counter such perceptions. “Our clients don’t feel that they are treated as a number,” he says. “We are trying to create the feel of a boutique while leveraging the benefits of an investment bank, for instance giving them access to the best new products and solutions, such as providing wrappers around hedge funds to make them UK-friendly.”

Barclays is trying to do something similar in its attempt to stitch together a wealth-management service from a number of disparate businesses. These include Barclays Global Investors, one of the world’s biggest fund managers, Barclays Capital, the bond-focused investment bank, Barclays Stockbrokers and Gerrard, the upmarket wealth manager.

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Even so, many people are put off by the lack of exclu-sivity in an organisation with a high street name. This is providing an opening for the “Goldilocks” firms – not too big to be impersonal, not too small to offer a full range of services. One such institution is SG Hambros, the 168-year-old City merchant bank, which has reinvented itself as a private bank under the umbrella of France’s Société Générale.

Unlike some upstarts, it offers a full banking service, including its famous leather-covered chequebook. It has differentiated itself by, for instance, carving a niche in advising divorcees of rich or celebrity spouses. Often the bank will make an unsecured loan to the wife or husband to tide her or him over during the divorce proceedings.

Warwick Newbury, the SG Hambros chief executive, says: “When the settlement comes through, we hope we have built up the trust so that we are well up the beauty parade – if not the only choice – to handle the person’s investment management.”

Some newer wealth managers play more overtly to the new themes of the well-heeled, many of whom are women. Bramdiva, the wealth manager launched by Nicola Horlick, the fund manager, uses its female-friendly approach as its central selling proposition. “A lot of women are sick of going to people who patronise them or shower them with jargon,” she says.

Other boutiques are cashing in on the rediscovered conscience of the wealthy. Like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, many of Britain’s rich are demanding that their money is invested with more than a thought for social or environmental consequences.

Truestone, with only 700 clients on its books, is at the bottom end of the scale of wealth managers, but it is growing rapidly on the back of its expertise in ethical investment.

Neil Sandy, who recently moved over from Barclays Wealth Management, says that Truestone is attracting an increasing number of clients demanding this type of service. He says: “City professionals who are 41 or 42 and have made a lot of money through bonuses are coming to us and saying: ‘What more can I do with my life?’ ” This may even extend to putting the professional’s services at the disposal of one of the charities with which Truestone is linked.

But those who come into the “ultra-high-net-worth category” are still likely to seek a more bespoke service. For them, nothing less than a family office where they can discuss their requirements with a dedicated manager will be the answer.

Yet such is the competition in this market that even an adviser as exclusive as Stanhope Capital, which has only about 30 families, each with more than $50 million (£25.5 million) on its books, will charge no more than 1 per cent of funds under management for its services.

Given the range of advice on offer, there has seldom been a better time not only to be rich, but also to stay rich.

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