Royal Bank of Canada’s wealth management division reported net income of $213 million for the quarter that ended Jan. 31, up $88 million from a year earlier, partly due to higher fee-based client assets and some accounting adjustments.

But, those increases were also offset by lower transaction volumes, according to the company’s earnings announcement Wednesday.

“Our wealth management business benefited from improved market conditions over last year, resulting in higher average free-based client assets and a return of investor confidence,” Gordon M. Nixon, RBC’s president and chief executive officer, said in a press release. “We continue to leverage our global capabilities to differentiate our product and service offerings to both individual and inspirational clients.”

The wealth management division is also appealing to advisors nationally. RBC has been on a recruiting tear lately, luring high-producing teams and advisors from a number of competitors including Stifel Nicolaus, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney [MS] and UBS [UBS].

RBC Wealth boosted its cash payouts by at least 1% for all advisors doing at least $400,000 in trailing-12 production. It also did not cut cash payouts on the lower end of the production spectrum.

The parent company, Royal Bank of Canada, reported that its quarterly earnings increased 35% to $1.45 billion from a year earlier. It cited “general improvement in market and economic conditions” as the main reason.

As Group Managing Editor of SourceMedia’s Investment Advisor Group, Lee oversees all editorial aspects of our Bank Investment Consultant brand. He has spent half his 20-year journalism career at SourceMedia and legacy companies. Before taking over BIC in April 2011, he spent more than three years as managing editor of On Wall Street. And before that he was a senior editor at U.S. Banker magazine for four years. He also worked as an editor in the newsletter unit of legacy divisions of the company for three years, covering various aspects of the fixed-income markets.

ûLee started his career as a reporter at the St. Louis Business Journal after graduating from the University of Missouri with a B.S. in economics. He is currently working toward an MBA at Baruch College, part of City University of New York.