Royal Bank of Canada will take a further writedown on subprime investments in the first quarter of 2008, said CFO Janice Fukakusa today.

Fukakusa spoke in New York this morning at the Citigroup financial services conference.

Fukasawa said in the fourth quarter, last year “we had noted there that we had exposure to one monoline [bond insurer] that was rated a single-A, that we had taken a provision against that exposure, and the current mark-to-market as of Oct. 31 was $104 million.”

But, she added: “That monoline subsequently is in difficulty so we have written off the balance of our exposure there in our first quarter results.”

In the last quarter of 2007, RBC took a $357 million writedown charge related to exposure to subprime investments backed by a monoline insurer.

With banks both domestically and south of the border suffering writedowns from exposure to bond insurers, the monoline industry is on shaky ground.

“Weakness of the position of the monoline insurers is one of the things that is causing great uncertainty in markets,” said David Dodge, governor of the Bank of Canada, in a recent press conference.

CIBC also suffered a hit late last year due to subprime exposure. It took a US$2 billion writedown for the period ending Dec. 31, related to hedge protection it bought from ACA Financial Guaranty Corp.

RBC is currently reviewing its disclosure for the current quarter, which ends on January 31, and earnings results will be released at the end of February.