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RBC Wealth Management's US Drive To Beat Rivals - Report

Editorial Staff

3 September 2020

Royal Bank of Canada's US wealth management unit has been attracting teams managing larger amounts of assets from bigger rivals, boosting revenues, according to Reuters.

In August, the US unit of the Canadian bank hired a team of four advisors from Morgan Stanley who managed $675 million in client assets, building on additions from other competitors including AllianceBernstein, Wells Fargo, Bank of America's Merrill Lynch and UBS, the report said.

When asked about the matter by this news service,  Royal Bank of Canada did not add further details.   

The firm’s recruitment drive has boosted average revenue per new advisor by 43 per cent year-to-date through July from the comparable year-earlier period, the newswire said, citing the firm's internal figures. 

“The US is a great opportunity for the enterprise, given it is 10 to 11 times bigger than the Canadian market," Michael Armstrong, the chief executive of RBC's US wealth management unit, was quoted by the news agency as saying in an interview. "The key premise behind recruiting for us is that it's really important that we try to reach scale in our business.”

The report noted how RBC has expanded into US wealth management since its acquisition of Minneapolis-based brokerage and investment bank Dain Rauscher Wessels almost 20 years ago. In 2015, RBC bought California-based City National, a step that brought it a large slice of the Hollywood and entertainment industry wealth population.