Ross McEwan, RBS chief executive, aims to reduce the bank’s non-UK activities to less than a quarter of its assets as part of a drastic restructuring he launched a few months after taking over in October 2013, the Financial Times reported. McEwan has held meetings in Singapore to discuss such a pullback.

RBS declined to comment to this publication on the specifics of the latest media report. A spokesperson said: "We have already signalled our strategy to become a smaller, more focused business supporting UK/ Western Europe corporates but no comment on the detail of this story."

The bank employs about 2,000 people in Asia, providing mostly large corporate clients with foreign exchange, interest rate and commodity trading, as well as debt capital markets, financial advisory and bank financing services.

If such a pullback occurs, it will be a demonstration of how Western banks haven't found the Asian market as easy to profit from as some might have once hoped, given all the commentary about the rise of Asia's economy. Last year, Societe Generale sold its Asia private bank to Singapore-headquartered DBS Group.

The newspaper added that a report about a potential Asian exit comes only a month after it emerged that RBS plans to wind down its fixed-income trading business in Japan, following six years of consecutive losses in the country.

RBS has a significant footprint in Asia, with operations in China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan and Australia.