ICICI Bank, India’s second largest bank, says it plans to hire up to 400 private bankers this year as it expands its wealth management opera...

ICICI Bank, India’s second largest bank, says it plans to hire up to 400 private bankers this year as it expands its wealth management operations. The Hyderabad-based bank, which started private banking three years ago and is now the leader overseeing client assets of $5 billion onshore, targets a 10 percent share of client wealth in India in two to three years versus 2.5 percent of the $200 billion market it has now. Although a considerable amount of this market is mass affluent. The firm aims to raise its private bankers' headcount to 650 by March 2006 from 250 in March this year, according to Arpit Agarwal, head of private banking at ICICI, in an interview he gave with Reuters. The hiring will largely be of graduates and MBAs from colleges to train them as bankers, he added. Half of the $5 billion private banking assets that ICICI oversees comes from clients with accounts of $1.2 million and above but the group has set a low threshold of Rupees 500,000 ($11,487) for entry.