Presence of high net worth individuals in the Gulf region and high-level of liquidity have attracted India's largest private lender ICICI to focus on private banking, which would include services tailor-made for the affluent.
ICICI Bank's Head (Global Private Banking) Anup Bagchi said: "ICICI Bank Private Banking offers its High Networth Individual (HNIs) customers innovative products and strategies".
At ICICI Bank Private Banking, HNI customer convenience is utilised as a strategic tool across all our business lines and the bank offers a suite of multi-channel, innovative and convenient products catering to different customer requirements, he added.
Bagchi oversees more than Dh5.7 billion worth of remittances sent home every year. Globally, remittances to India were worth Dh92bn, with ICICI claiming 25 per cent of this market. A quarter of ICICI remittances are sent from the UAE, while the United States is the largest market.
In the Gulf, ICICI has representative offices in the DIFC and Abu Dhabi, and a branch in Qatar and fully-fledged operation in Bahrain. Recently it was granted a full commercial branch (FCB) license by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB). ICICI Bank launched its operations in Bahrain as an offshore banking unit in October 2004.
We have a very large corporate banking business and a very large SME business, so we have many kinds of people who want capital, and in the UAE we have people who are sitting on capital, Bagchi added.
{{/usCountry}}We have a very large corporate banking business and a very large SME business, so we have many kinds of people who want capital, and in the UAE we have people who are sitting on capital, Bagchi added.
{{/usCountry}}In the UAE, the first customers were NRIs, while the next were local institutions looking to invest in India and this is a big growth area for us, Bagchi was quoted as saying in Emirates Today. The third wave, which only started in the past few months, is from non-Indian individuals.