TEMPLATE COMPLAINT LETTER

Dear Mr. Sants, [Mr. Merricks]

I am writing to you to complain formally about the poor investment advice that I and others (see couttsaigactiongroup.org) have received from Coutts & Co. Given Coutts' refusal to date to acknowledge that they were at fault, I feel that I must register a complaint through you with the Financial Services Authority [the Financial Ombudsman Service].

In [Month] [Year], I was advised by Coutts to invest £[XX] in AIG Life Premier Bonds on the basis that they best met my investment priorities for capital preservation and easy access to my funds. However, on 15 September 2008, AIG's Enhanced Fund - into which [some/all of] the proceeds from my AIG Life Premier Bond investments had been placed - was frozen.

[Subsequently, and at Coutts' suggestion, I chose to have [XX]% of my bonds converted into the AIG Protected Recovery Fund. The alternative would have been to suffer an immediate and very substantial loss of capital. This effectively locks up almost £[XX] until July 2012, with little prospect of earning any additional interest, and no certainty that the money will be returned.] [Subsequently, I decided to withdraw all my money from AIG Funds, despite a significant loss of capital.]

I expected better from Coutts, given its position as one of the oldest and most highly respected private banks in the country. Like many others who have lost money as a result of Coutts' advice, I trusted them implicitly.

It has now become clear that the Enhanced Fund held a significant proportion of illiquid, non-cash assets (including asset-backed securities and floating rate notes) - with the consequence that when there was a run on the Enhanced Fund in September, the illiquidity of those assets resulted in it being frozen and then closed.

Clearly, Coutts should have provided potential investors such as myself with adequate warnings as to the nature and risks of these assets (not least by way of contrast with the other AIG Life fund into which Premier Bond investments could alternatively have been placed - namely the "Standard Fund", which invested solely in cash assets and which AIG Life did not therefore need to freeze/close when there was a run on the AIG Life Bonds). That Coutts did not do so is, I believe, a serious failing on their part.

Despite mounting concerns about AIG's viability, it appears that Coutts continued to recommend AIG Life Bonds right up until the Enhanced Fund was frozen, with disastrous consequences. In addition, I am concerned about Coutts' advice [to me] that AIG Life Bonds were safer than bank deposits in the sense that, as insurance bonds, they were 90% guaranteed through the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, whereas the cap on a bank deposit (at that time) was only £35,000. That advice failed to alert retail customers such as me to the risk that the unit price of the bonds could fall substantially (because of weaknesses in the underlying asset portfolio) but that this would not trigger any contractual default by AIG Life - and hence would also not trigger the operation of the FSCS. This was clearly different from the nature of the bank deposit protection scheme - which supports the banks' primary obligations to return contractually guaranteed amounts to depositors.

In summary, I find Coutts' complete denial of responsibility reprehensible. I hope that the FSA [FOS] will use its best endeavours to investigate the above matter and bring Coutts to account.

Yours sincerely