UBS exited the onshore wealth business of India a decade ago, but with its acquisition of Credit Suisse and other moves, it is thought to be pushing to get back into a market with a rising affluent middle class.

UBS is looking at partnership options for wealth management in India, a country that has seen a rapid growth in its affluent population in recent years, according to a report.

Zurich-listed UBS, which has spent more than a year integrating the Credit Suisse business and which has a substantial Asia-Pacific presence, has held early-stage internal discussions about possibilities including buying a stake in a local firm to form a joint venture, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources. No decisions have been made so far, the report said.

The bank declined to comment to this news service about the newswire’s article. 

The report noted that UBS exited India’s onshore wealth business about a decade ago. Its Credit Suisse acquisition – made last spring in a “shotgun wedding” to rescue its stricken Swiss rival – is a way of returning to the growing Indian wealth market, the story continued. 

Iqbal Khan, co-head of global wealth management, is relocating to Asia. The report said that many management discussions over strategy are on the table.

India’s growth story is proving hard to resist as a topic. According to TIFIN, an AI and innovation platform for the wealth sector, the penetration of wealth management in India is only 8 per cent (compared with 72 per cent in the US and 44 per cent in China). With a population of more than 1.4 billion, TIFIN expects over 500 million individuals to access wealth and asset management services in the next seven years. 

As an example of Indian wealth management stories, Eton Solutions, which provides cloud-based services for family offices, earlier in July launched its enterprise reporting platform, AtlasFive, in India. It also announced that the launch client is Catamaran, the family office of Infosys’s founder, Narayana Murthy. The US-headquartered tech firm, created by US multi-family office Eton Advisors about a decade ago, also aims to set up a presence in GIFT City, Gujarat. In a separate story, Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) is starting operations at the new GIFT City financial hub in India. HSBC also plans to offer dollar-denominated products to non-residents from the hub.