Two years into leading RBC Wealth Management (RBC WM) and Insurance, group head Neil McLaughlin is unbothered by regional league tables. Instead, he is steering the Canadian lender through a disciplined expansion in Asia, relying on organic hiring and AI deployment to protect unit economics against rising cost pressures and fee compression.
McLaughlin views his transition from personal and commercial banking across the business to wealth management as one of continuity, rather than contrast.
“Asset management has a slightly different angle, so the manufacturing and investment management processes required time for me to really understand how we accomplish results,” said McLaughlin, adding that the core requirement remains identifying and understanding client goals through a thorough discovery process.
RBC completed the acquisition of HSBC Bank Canada in March 2024. For McLaughlin, who took over the group head position just six months after completion, the acquisition has been a driving force enabling the bank to deepen its understanding of the trade and wealth corridors from Canada to Asia.
“When HSBC decided to exit the Canadian market, we needed to support their clients with the same capabilities — whether supply chain finance or transferring currency to multiple locations — so we had to build out a lot of those capabilities,” he said.
RBC Wealth Management emerged as one of the most active hirers in Asia in 2025 by significantly expanding its relationship manager headcount. Yet, despite this momentum, the bank remains outside Asian Private Banker’s top 25 AUM League Table — a position that does not seem to faze leadership.
While McLaughlin said the bank does not disclose AUM separately for the Asia franchise, two key points continue to define the Canadian bank’s outlook for the region: the market’s fragmented landscape, which creates significant growth opportunities, and high confidence in local teams executing a long-term strategy rather than chasing short-term regional AUM targets.
“We do not have a target in terms of where we want to be in the league table. Our focus is building a high-quality franchise for the long term while driving ambitious internal goals to capture regional growth,” McLaughlin said.
Following Rod Ireland’s retirement in August, Kamran Azim will become head of wealth management Asia and CEO of RBC Singapore Branch on 1 November 2026. Azim currently serves as the Singapore head of private banking.
“We look at the markets in terms of what’s the starting point of the franchise, what’s the market we can serve, and how we can think about growing. If you look at Hong Kong versus Singapore right now, we have a 60/40 or 65/35 split in terms of presence. That’s probably the balance we would stay with for the short term, and we’re investing in both of them,” said McLaughlin.
Besides Asia, RBC operates its global wealth business in Canada, the US, the UK and Europe. In its home market of Canada, the firm is the largest full-service wealth management firm with client assets exceeding C$4.6 trillion (US$3.3 trillion) globally and over C$5.5 trillion in assets under administration.
“The more important view is that we treat the business like we are building a franchise for the long term, rather than thinking about it through a single planning period or economic cycle,” said McLaughlin.
In the US, RBC ranks as the sixth-largest player, following nine years of growth, employing roughly 2,500 advisors, comparable to its Canadian advisory team.
In both Canada and the US, RBC operates full-service brokerages, while in the UK, operations focus on mass-affluent clients and a niche ultra high net worth (UHNW) segment, with recent focus directed at completing technology and data integration following the Brewin Dolphin acquisition in September 2022.
The UK footprint operates a dual-model structure: a private wealth model for UHNW clients, alongside the Brewin Dolphin platform, which targets affluent to HNW individuals using an advisor-based approach.
Early this year, the bank’s CEO Dave McKay told a Canadian national newspaper that it is planning offices in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh as it seeks to expand capital markets and wealth management operations.
“We see the Middle East and Asia as important corridors over the medium term, so each of those is something we know we can participate in,” McLaughlin said.
The region’s private banking and wealth management industry has traditionally relied on recruiting successful advisors with large books of business. This model has drawn questions over its sustainability.
But McLaughlin said that the bank does not view this approach as buying the clients, but rather as hiring the advisor, noting that growth relies on both individual client relationships and generating new prospects.
“But a lot of the expectation is that there’s brand new relationships through prospecting,” he said, adding that they’re not buying the book of business but rather onboarding the advisor.
Heading towards 2027, McLaughlin said the bank’s talent roadmap remains grounded in organic, disciplined growth.
“Rather than chasing raw headcount, our strategy focuses on adding high-calibre private bankers in key regional hubs like Hong Kong and Singapore who align with our culture, live our values, and possess the expertise to manage complex, multi-jurisdictional client needs,” he added.
Empowering that expanded advisor base, however, is increasingly a matter of technology rather than sheer human capital. In an environment where AI dominates executive discussions, clients are also becoming far more informed and using their own AI tools, requiring advisors to prove deeper value.
McLaughlin said that the bank has adopted internal productivity tools to dramatically streamline workflows. For example, annual review preparation time in the UK has shortened from three hours to 30 minutes.
While wealth management is prized for its recurring revenue model, simultaneous fee compression and cost inflation also force the uncomfortable question of whether firms are relying on a false sense of structural resilience.
“My short answer would be no. If you look at fee compression and rising regulatory costs, these are trends we’d be talking about across many of the franchises we operate at RBC for the last 15 years. So it’s not a new trend,” McLaughlin said.
He believes fee compression (charging clients lower percentage fees) and rising costs will not destroy the wealth management business model, because asset volume growth continues to outpace fee rate declines, while scale efficiencies lower marginal costs to protect profitability.
Technology could be the key to driving down costs over time. “In the next three years — a relatively short period of time — you’ll see efficiency start to come into that work. We’ll have better outcomes for our regulators, and a shift in terms of the unit economics on the cost to be compliant,” he said.
This article was originally published in Asian Private Banker .