Aligning Profit With Principles

Founded by Sir Richard Hoare in 1672, C. Hoare & Co. is the UK’s oldest privately-owned bank and the third-oldest family business in the UK.

The seven partners – all descendants of Sir Richard – bear unlimited liability and are central to the running of the business.

The bank started trading at the Sign of the Golden Bottle in Cheapside and moved to its current location in Fleet Street in 1690. As the business passed from one generation of the Hoare family to the next, it gained a reputation for principled and prudent management, attracting customers such as Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen and Lord Byron. Today’s partners continue to focus on quality of service and provide bespoke banking underpinned by unchanging values of honesty, empathy, excellence and social responsibility to high-net worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals, families and businesses (including a large number of family businesses). The bank looks always to maintain long-term relationships with its customers and a number of these relationships stretch back over centuries.

A tradition of giving

The bank and the wider Hoare family have a long tradition of innovative philanthropy. In 1719 ‘Good Henry’ Hoare was a founder of Westminster Hospital, the world’s first hospital to offer care free at the point of need, while William Hoare set up the UK’s first hospice in 1891. Today, the partners donate up to 10% of annual profits to social, educational and environmental causes via the bank’s charitable trust, The Golden Bottle Trust: in 2019/20, £2,798,914 was distributed in grants to some 325 beneficiaries. 

The partners – all descendants of Sir Richard – bear unlimited liability and are central to the running of the business.

Good bankers and good citizens

In recent years C. Hoare & Co. has done much to embed philanthropy at the very heart of its operations; the bank strives to fulfil its purpose as ‘good bankers and good citizens’ in all its decisions and at every level of the business. More than 50% of colleagues are engaged in charitable giving via the bank’s Give as You Earn scheme (individual GAYE contributions are double-matched by the Golden Bottle Trust), while 100% of the Golden Bottle Trust’s investments are made with a demonstrable intention to create a positive environmental and/or social return. This ‘total portfolio impact’ ensures that the trust’s investments, as well as its grant giving, are a clear force for good.

The bank enjoys exceptionally close personal relationships with its customers, many of whom share its philanthropic aims and values. It was the first UK bank to introduce a donor-advised fund, the Master Charitable Trust, to support customers’ charitable giving. This is an umbrella charity that enables customers to give in a tax-efficient manner without the administrative burden of running their own charity or foundation. In the 10 years since the Master Charitable Trust was launched, it has facilitated charitable donations of £160m.

Supporting the local community

Community engagement is another key part of the bank’s philanthropic agenda and this has rarely been more vital than in these last two years. Among other initiatives to support the local community through the COVID-19 pandemic, C. Hoare & Co. donated coffee machines and supplied meals to NHS workers at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital and donated ‘blessing bags’ filled with essential goods to The Connection at St Martins-in-the-Fields to support homeless people in temporary housing. The bank’s catering team also cooked meals for The Passage, a voluntary-sector day-care centre for the homeless and the vulnerable, and colleagues raised over £4,000 to fund the purchase of an electric van for the charity’s food deliveries. In line with its long-term objective to give a ‘helping hand’ to those affected by social exclusion and unemployment, the bank donated workwear to two charities, Smart Works and Key4Life, and ran an ‘aspiration-raising day’ with students from ThinkForward, a youth-employment charity that prepares disadvantaged young people for the world of work.

A new chapter opens

Next year C. Hoare & Co. celebrates its 350th anniversary, but for all its remarkable heritage, it is an emphatically forward-facing institution. In November 2021 the bank welcomed its first 12th-generation partner and sustainability will remain an important area of focus as this unique family business looks forward to supporting its customers, colleagues and community for generations to come.

For more information on C. Hoare & Co., please visit https://www.hoaresbank.co.uk