Since introducing this priority, we have identified and eliminated significant duplication across the organization, created enterprise centres of expertise and further centralized purchasing and other infrastructural activities. We have recently increased our focus on revenue and client-oriented initiatives to accelerate revenue growth. Some notable examples are provided below.

The RBC Snowbird Package introduced in August draws on the products and services of several RBC businesses and addresses the specific needs of a group of clients – Canadians who vacation and live in the Southern U.S. during the winter months. The RBC Snowbird Package offers special rates on banking, travel insurance, mortgage and foreign exchange services for long-stay travellers. The package is designed to give clients a worry-free stay in the U.S. by making it easier to handle their financial transactions from an expanding network of RBC Centura branches and ATMs in the Southeast U.S., a dedicated toll-free telephone number and best-in-class travel medical insurance.

To facilitate cross-selling and strengthen our offering to U.S. clients, RBC Centura enhanced the insurance specialist program launched last year in collaboration with RBC Insurance. Under this program, mobile insurance specialists are assigned to RBC Centura branches where they provide a wide range of insurance solutions to clients through personal referrals from branch employees. The results to date have been very encouraging with over 2,000 referrals in 2003.

RBC Centura is also working with RBC Mortgage to identify RBC Mortgage clients who could benefit from RBC Centura products and services. Anchoring these relationships with RBC Centura branches provides an opportunity to deepen client relationships and strengthen client loyalty. RBC Centura is also working with RBC Dain Rauscher to serve clients of its Public Finance and Asset Management divisions in RBC Centura’s geographic footprint. At the same time, RBC Centura is cross-selling RBC Mortgage and RBC Dain Rauscher capabilities to its clients.

In partnership with RBC Centura, RBC Investments is growing our North American private banking business by introducing private banking services for high net worth clients in the U.S., as well as Canadian clients with U.S. interests. This initiative begins to establish RBC Investments Private Banking in major U.S. markets where RBC has a presence. Through our pilot in an RBC Centura branch located in Boca Raton, Florida, we offer private banking services (consisting of banking, lending and wealth management solutions) to clients, using a highly personalized relationship approach.

RBC Insurance and RBC Royal Bank partnered to improve efficiencies and win new business by creating the Investment Credit Facility program for Canadian clients. This program allows high net worth policyholders to borrow up to $5 million against the collateral in their universal life insurance policies. Using the credit underwriting experience of RBC Royal Bank and the insurance expertise of RBC Insurance, we are able to deliver a well-priced and tax-efficient financial vehicle to our clients easily and conveniently from one source. Since the launch, we have approved investment credit facilities worth more than $121 million.

The creditor division of RBC Insurance collaborated with the RBC Royal Bank eBusiness and client experience teams to better integrate its creditor insurance products in Canada. Through technology, we simplified and standardized processes across all product lines and channels, enabling us to view the same client information through all distribution channels, virtually eliminating manual handling, duplication and paper storage. With over 2.5 million creditor clients, and more than 10 million retail clients in Canada, this will significantly reduce costs, eliminate client irritants and improve overall relationships.

Given that emerging market countries represent 75 per cent of the world’s population and 50 per cent of global GDP, emerging market debt can be a component of clients’ global investments. Accordingly, RBC Investments and RBC Capital Markets employed the capabilities of risk management, the sales force of RBC Capital Markets and technology along with the expertise of RBC Investments in emerging markets to form the Emerging Markets (EM) Fixed Income Group. In addition to the Toronto team, which includes traders, a sales desk, analysts and strategists, an affiliate desk was established in London to provide markets in non-dollar EM bonds. Providing our clients a wider range of global fixed income products and advisory services enables us to strengthen our existing relationships and attract new business. We are the only Canadian financial institution with an EM research and trading group enabling us to better compete with other major firms around the globe.

As cross-enterprise initiatives continue to evolve, some of the opportunities are becoming more intricate in their structure, more wide reaching in scope and more powerful in their impact. The Integrated Products Group, consisting of teams from RBC Capital Markets and RBC Dain Rauscher charged with incubating cross-enterprise opportunities, have had initial success working with RBC Mortgage, which in 2003 originated 126,000 residential mortgages in the U.S. amounting to US$28 billion. Traditionally, these mortgages were sold in bundles to competitors who then repackaged them into smaller packages that were converted into securities, not unlike bonds, for sale to retail investors. The securitization process facilitates the movement of investments from less efficient mortgage debt markets to more efficient capital markets – a process that is entirely invisible to the homeowners, but for the financial institution granting the mortgage, is crucial to managing its balance sheet and risk exposure. The RBC Mortgage Committee, comprising representatives from each of our five businesses, tackled the challenge of distributing these mortgages through RBC Dain Rauscher’s U.S. institutional fixed income platform rather than through a competitor and concluded there were significant opportunities to create a positive impact by altering the way in which mortgage loans were distributed. In the spring of 2003, for example, in one large transaction the Committee coordinated the securitization of US$130 million of mortgage loans.

As Canada’s premier Automated Clearing House (ACH) direct deposit and payment provider, we offer our clients leading-edge technology payment services. In 2003, RBC Global Services processed more than 250 million ACH payments. RBC Global Services is the payment engine behind many bank services. For example, RBC Global Services provides RBC Banking with its Pre-Authorized Payment service to regularly debit client accounts for their RSP-matic product. Another collaboration with RBC Banking provides online tax filing to Canadian small business and other business clients through the RBC Banking Online Banking service. During 2003, client use of this product grew by 30 per cent.

RBC Global Services collaborated with RBC Capital Markets to form the Hedge Funds Service Group, enhancing our product and service offering by creating a unique model in the Canadian market. Both businesses provide hedge fund products to high net worth and institutional investors: RBC Capital Markets is the leader in the Canadian market for traditional prime brokerage and RBC Global Services is one of the first custodians globally to provide hedge fund services. The benefits to our existing and prospective clients include a wider range of hedge fund products and services from a single source. This also means an enhanced competitive position in the hedge funds market.