The Swiss private banking arm of Royal Bank of Canada aims to double its client assets in the next four years after emerging from the crisis without losing assets like some competitors, the Canadian firm says.

"We've doubled in size in the last four and a half years and in my view we will double in size again in the next four," Karen Simpson told the Reuters Global Private Banking Summit.

The unit, which is active in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India and Latin America, currently holds around SFr7.5 billion in assets, 65 per cent of which are in dollars, Simpson was quoted as saying.

"We literally have every single year been minimum 15 per cent up on assets, going up to 25 per cent, and we expect that to continue," she said, adding that 60 per cent of new assets came from existing clients.

"If we can continue at a minimum of 20 per cent per annum asset growth, then we are doing our job correctly," she said.

RBC, which was ranked as seventh largest global wealth management player in a Scorpio Partnership study, was looking for acquisitions, and this also applied to the Swiss private bank, though viable targets were proving difficult to come by, Simpson said.

"For all the talk of consolidation here in Switzerland, we haven't really seen that much in the past couple of years," she said.

"This year we've looked at three but none of them have closed. I think at the present time there is more talk than action," she said, adding banks that had stated they wished to be sold had subsequently not been put on the market.

Key to potential acquisitions was the potential cultural fit with RBC, which seeks banks with "clean" assets - ones declared to clients' local tax authorities - and without reputational problems.

RBC’s international wealth management business has a large footprint; for example, the Canadian bank has substantial operations in the UK and some of its offshore dependencies, as in the Channel Islands.

Recently, RBC Wealth Management appointed a new deputy chairman of its international ultra high net worth unit as part of a new restructuring strategy which will include adding a fourth operational region - emerging markets. Michael Lagopoulos will become deputy chairman of RBC Wealth Management, ultra high net worth international, moving from his former role as president and chief executive of the firm’s international wealth management business.