News: Bankers target cash-rich NRIs

(DNA 08/02/2007) Mumbai - India’s population of high networth individuals may be growing at the second-fastest rate in the Asia-Pacific region (after South Korea), but the absolute numbers are still small. No wonder then that private bankers and wealth managers are increasingly looking towards non-resident Indians (NRIs) who are flush with cash to shore up their businesses.

Though there is no accurate figure available on NRI wealth, Pradeep Dokania, managing director and head of the global private client group at DSP Merrill Lynch, says the broad projections are between $400 billion and $800 billion. He adds that there are an estimated 22 million NRIs, of which around 22,000 are dollar millionaires. These 22,000 add substantially to the 83,000 dollar millionaires that the Capgemini-Merrill Lynch Asia-Pacific Wealth Report 2006 estimates India to have had in 2005.

It’s little wonder then that Merrill Lynch recently hired two veteran Citigroup employees to beef up its global private client non-resident Indian (NRI) business: Inderjeet Hora as market director of the European and African NRI markets, and Aseem Arora as market managing director for the Asia-Pacific NRI market. While the former will be based in London, the latter will be based out of Singapore.

SG Private Banking, the private wealth management arm of French financial services group Société Générale, has a global centre in Singapore to cater to NRIs.

Balakrishnan Kunnambath, managing director and global head of the Indian subcontinent, SG Private Banking (Asia Pacific), says: “We provide comprehensive and dedicated service to high networth Indian clients globally. This includes inbound investments into Indian capital markets along with a large suite of global investment opportunities.”

Relatively smaller domestic wealth managers have also not fallen behind in chasing money from rich overseas Indians.

“The Middleast and US are the key markets, but there’s a lot of money in the UK, Canada and markets such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia,” said Akhilesh K Singh, business head of wealth management at Emkay Share and Stock Brokers. Emkay manages over Rs 450 crore under its portfolio management services.