The central bank has cleared the lender to create a wholly-owned subsidiary in the country.

DBS Bank India, which is part of Singapore-headquartered DBS, has won “in-principle approval” from the Reserve Bank of India to run as a wholly-owned subsidiary in the country, part of a move to tap hoped-for wealth increases there.

The bank will operate through physical and digital channels, DBS said in a statement yesterday. 

As part of the process, DBS also inaugurated its new India headquarters at the Express Towers in Nariman Point, Mumbai.

The moves follow DBS’s launch in April last year of digibank, which it described as “India’s first mobile-only bank”; so far, this business has acquired around 1.5 million clients. In October of the same year, DBS integrated its e-banking solution with India’s enterprise resource planning software. DBS also established DBS Asia Hub 2, its largest technology hub outside Singapore, in Hyderabad last year.

“DBS has been present in India for over 20 years. Over this time, we have grown to become the fifth-largest foreign bank in India. As we look into the future, I believe India’s consumption boom, investment and export drive, as well as positive policy action, will further fuel its growth, making it one of the biggest stories in Asia by 2030. With this local incorporation, DBS will be able to build greater scale in India, enabling us to better participate in India’s rise,” DBS Group CEO Piyush Gupta, said.

According to the Capgemini World Wealth Report 2016, issued last year, India’s population of high net worth individuals stood at 200,000, with total wealth of $797 billion; the population of such persons rose 1.1 per cent last year, with wealth rising 1.6 per cent.