Indian Bank Looks to Push into US, Canadian Wealth Market-Report

Tom Burroughes

15 August 2008

India's second largest bank,ICICI Bank, is pressing forward with the creation of a North American wealth management platform in the midst of a rocky period for this continent's financial institutions, according to Report on Business, a Canadian publication.

The bank recently appointed Hari Panday, the man who built its Canadian operations, to develop a wealth management strategy for Canada and the US.

"The Canadian board, as well as the parent board, felt we should throw some more firepower behind this initiative to give it shape," Mr Panday was quoted as saying in a recent interview.

"In many ways, we feel we really need to deal with it with some urgency, because time is starting to tick away," Mr Panday said.

ICICI Wealth Management is hoping that within seven or eight months, it will obtain approval from the Canadian investment industry regulator, the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, to become a full broker dealer. At that point, it hopes to offer a range of "India-centric" products, such as mutual funds, to retail investors.

"We have had an operation in New York; it's been trying to create the footprint, but certainly we felt that there's a lot more to be done in terms of the US as well as Canada," Mr Panday said.