The banking group, like a number of its international peers, is pulling out of the Indian private banking field.

HSBC is shutting its private banking unit in India and switching clients to other divisions as part of its group strategy, the Hong Kong/London-listed bank has said. This is another example of a global firm pulling out some services in the country as they focus on where they can achieve scale and take on entrenched local business, as mentioned elsewhere.

The bank is offering its private banking clients the choice to move to HSBC Premier, the bank's global retail banking and wealth management platform. The process is likely to be completed in the first quarter of 2016.

“After a strategic review of the global private banking operations in India, we have decided to close the business," it said.

"Our priority is to support our staff and clients through these changes which are expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2016. This marks further progress in the HSBC Group’s strategy to simplify its business and deliver sustainable growth. India is a priority market for the HSBC Group, where we continue to invest. We aim to achieve sustainable growth by supporting the needs of our customers in retail banking and wealth management, global banking and markets, and commercial banking, businesses where we have a leading and highly differentiated position," the bank added.

The development puts HSBC alongside a number of other financial institutions that have pulled out of the India wealth market – and others have also retreated from the asset management field as well. Deutsche Bank, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Royal Bank of Scotland have retreated from different sectors in India.

Reuters reported – citing an unnamed source – that the bank has around 70 staff in its private banking unit. In total, the bank has around 32,000 people in India, in its corporate, retail and investment banking arms.