Royal Bank of Canada accelerates plans to open new insurance offices

Royal Bank of Canada is speeding up its plans to open more insurance offices across Canada over the next year, after opening 13 in almost two years, according to a report by Bloomberg.com.
In an interview with Bloomberg reporter Doug Alexander, RBC Insurance CEO Neil Skelding is quoted as saying said the pace of the banks program to open new insurance offices is accelerating.”
We have many, many more openings planned this year on our way to a much larger number, probably closer to 100, Alexander quotes Skelding as saying.
Royal Bank opened its first insurance office near a Toronto bank branch in June 2005. It has since opened two insurance offices in the past five months, bringing the total to 13 in Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia.
Skelding told Bloomberg that physical constraints, such as finding storefronts beside branches, remain the biggest challenge.
We have to get a separate lease on a facility that’s nearby and, out of the 1,100 branches, that’s not always easy to find,” Skelding told Bloomberg. Not every branch, as you can imagine, would be well suited for this type of configuration but we’re doing it everywhere in effect that we can.”
Skelding also told Bloomberg he didnt expect the federal government to revise rules to allow banks to sell insurance products in traditional bank branches anytime soon.
With the possible election coming up and a minority government right now it’s hard to say that anything would happen in the short term,” he is quoted as saying.