RBC to form $7B real estate investment partnership

The bank will also be opening a real estate fund

RBC to form $7B real estate investment partnership

Royal Bank of Canada has announced that it will be forming a real estate investment partnership with property assets worth over $7 billion.

The alliance will be cemented between RBC Global Asset Management Inc, pension fund manager British Columbia Investment Management Corp (BCI), and real estate developer QuadReal Property Group.

RBC also stated that it will be setting up a real estate fund, Reuters reported. The fund is expected to be opened for investment in Q3 2019.

“Institutional clients are increasingly looking to alternative investment opportunities, and especially private market assets, to help them meet their long-term goals,” RBC Global Asset Management CEO Damon Williams said.

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Earlier this year, RBC president and CEO David McKay vowed that the institution will “do better” on its domestic mortgage business, after considerably weaker performances in 2017 and 2018.

“We competed poorly in 2017 and ’18 in the mortgage space,” McKay said at the RBC Capital Markets Canadian Bank CEO Conference in Toronto last January. “We lost market share.”

“We were disappointed in our performance and you’ll see us perform better,” McKay promised. “We’ve really amped up our focus on where our deficiencies were, and our sales force and our product and our pricing.”

The bank remains the largest mortgage lender nationwide, with the total volume of Canadian home loans at $246.9 billion as of the end of October 2018.

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