Sandy Shaw, who heads Middle Eastern operations at Coutts, a private bank based in London, says about a quarter of her clients are female, and are keen to keep control of their affairs, especially to ensure that their estates will pass to their children when they die.
In Britain, for example, Goodwin's niche brands besides NatWest and RBS range from Coutts (bankers to the Queen of England) to Tesco Personal Finance (a bank that's a joint venture with the supermarket chain) to DirectLine (insurance sales over the telephone).