RBS wealth arm seeks to double by 2015

Royal Bank of Scotland's private banking arm wants to become less UK-focused, double in size and bring its international unit into the historic Coutts brand, the division's head told Reuters in an interview.
Rory Tapner, RBS's wealth chief since last August, has launched a shake-up of the division that involves a push to win new clients in the Middle East, eastern Europe and Asia with the international private bank, currently called RBS Coutts, also to become branded simply as Coutts.
The London-based private bank, which counts Queen Elizabeth among its account holders, will spend less time chasing lower-margin customers worth under 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) or more than 75 million pounds, he said.
The mix of customers will also rebalance away from the home British market of Coutts, reducing the proportion of clients from 60 percent British to about 40 percent.
"We won't be shrinking the UK ... it implies we are adding in more investment in high growth markets rather than take lots of market share in mature markets," Tapner said.
By 2015 combined assets and liabilities will rise to 160 billion pounds from about 80 billion pounds currently, Tapner added.
The expansion will also be driven by emphasising higher-margin business lines such as investment, rather than aggressive capital expenditure, Tapner said.
"This is much more reorganisation and refocusing than lots of investment. That's part of what I've said to (RBS's chief executive) Stephen Hester and others. This is a self-help reorganisation rather than a request for lots of investment," he said.
The shake-up does not involve additional job cuts but the new regime will be more performance-focused, Tapner said. "What I'm hoping is staff will simply adjust their behaviour onto the more profitable spaces and therefore there's no real need to think
about decreasing numbers." he said. "To the extent that we find some who just don't adjust ... then we will be making some of the slightly harsher decisions, but we're not anticipating that at the moment," he said.