Standard Chartered Bank on Friday launched private banking operations in India. It plans to launch this service in the country's top six cities by the end of 2008.
Besides India, the bank has launched the business in nine other markets including Singapore, Hong kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, London and Jersey.
"Wealth management is a focus area for us. We already have a robust business, growing at 25 to 30 per cent per annum for the last three years," said Murali Natrajan, regional head, consumer banking, India & Nepal, Standard Chartered Bank.
The foreign bank is present in the wealth management space with client assets under management of Rs 10,000 crore. Under the private banking business segment, it will focus on high networth individuals with investable surplus of $1 million (about Rs 4 crore).
The wealth management business is a key focus area for the bank with $10 billion of its $20 billion annual revenue flowing from its wealth management services. The bank plans to double this revenue stream by 2010.
"Our principle focus is to provide appropriate advice to our clients. The private banking space looks crowded with none of the players having a critical market share. The bank will start with tapping its existing two million customers of which one million are wealth management clients," said Shiv Khazanchi, managing director and head, private banking, India, Standard Chartered Bank.
The bank will follow an open architecture model and has tied up with 30 local provider agreements.
StanChart has a priority banking customer base, of which 200 clients will be upgraded to private banking and an additional 1000 clients will be upgraded by the end of this year.
The bank is also planning to tap its small and medium enterprises customer base.
Globally the bank has a team of 150 relationship managers which it plans to increase to around 300 over a period of three years.
In India, there is a team of 25 relationship managers and the bank plans to increase to 50 by the end of the year.
