Financial Times quoted two people involved in the discussions saying that the partly nationalized bank could leave the scheme by the end of this year instead of 2012.
RBS CEO Stephen Hester has maintained that 2012 was the earliest possible exit date.
As part of the state-backed asset protection scheme, the government has insured $447bn of RBS’s bad debts.
According to Financial Times, one of the options considered was to spin off the APS portfolio into a separately capitalized entity, a bad bank with a government guarantee.
The APS, for which RBS pays a £700m-a-year insurance premium, was designed to run indefinitely with a minimum cumulative charge of £2.5bn.
This month RBS paid its latest installment, bringing the total cost so far to £2.1bn.
