The head of RBC's US wealth management business John Taft has told Reuters that the wave of recruiting has subsided, so his firm will focus on attracting break-away brokers and their clients.

Mr Taft said in an interview with the news service: "The crisis-driven flight of talent has settled down. In terms of the movement of wirehouse advisors to the independent channel, we think we're at the beginning of that trend, not the end."

RBC Wealth Management has hired more than 320 advisors in the past year, taking advantage of brokers leaving firms damaged by the financial crisis, according to the news agency, which reports that more than 22,000 registered brokers moved from one broker-dealer to another last year. More than 8,000 came from the four largest wirehouses and more than 1,000 of these moved to regional and independent firms.

The brokerage model of wealth management has been in ferment in North America in the past couple of years. Morgan Stanley, for example, forged a joint venture deal with the Smith Barney broker-dealer business of Citigroup, while Bank of America, which bought Merrill Lynch's vast network of advisors over a year ago, has been catapulted up the rankings to become the world's biggest wealth manager.

RBC agreed last autumn to buy JPMorgan Chase's registered investment advisor services business to gain from what Mr Taft sees a continuing wave of departures.

"Some of the very best advisors in the industry moved from their wirehouse platform to our platform. Anything you hear about those being lower-end brokers is, in our experience, not accurate. The quality of advisors who were moving was extraordinary."