Brown Shipley, the UK private bank, has launched a new private banking service that targets South Asian clients living in the UK and other countries.

The new venture is led byRavi Sidhoo, head of global South Asian banking for the firm's parent,KBL European Private Bankers. Its primary targets are senior finance professionals, doctors and entrepreneurs living in the UK but are of South Asian region, particularly from India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. 

"South Asia has seen enormous economic growth in recent years, fuelled in part by the success of India, which has emerged as one of the largest and fastest growing economies in the world," said Sidhoo.

He is joined by three private bankers, Sameer Kaushal as private banking director, Dhruv Bhatnagar as senior private banker and Imran Qureshi as private banker, Brown Shipley said in a statement. Kaushal was previously the head of the non-resident Indians unit in the UK and Europe at HSBC, Bhatnagar was an associate director at EFG Private Bank, while Qureshi was an assistant private banker at SG Hambros. 

In the research titled "South Asia's Wealth Diaspora: Looking Beyond Non-Resident Indians," Reportlinker said that the population of overseas Indians, including NRIs and persons of Indian origin, reached 21.6 million in 2011, Pakistanis reached 8 million and Sri Lankans 2.5 million. From 2007 and 2011, the value of the worldwide wealth management market for NRI millionaires went up at a compound annual growth rate of 9.4 per cent. This is expected to grow to 10.93 per cent by 2016.