The Hindu Business Line : ABN-Amro keen to grow private banking biz

The bank's Vice-President and Head, Private Banking, Ms. Sutapa Banerjee, said that currently the private banking operations had assets under management (AUM) of about $750 million (Rs 3,445.3 crore) in the country. "We would like to see the AUM rise to over $2 billion (Rs 9,186.9 crore) over five years," she said. For this purpose, the bank intends to look beyond the metros to class one cities. The cities being targeted include Hyderabad, Mysore, Pune and Baroda.

By the current financial year-end, the bank hoped to be in at least eight to nine cities in the country.

"We will also use the hub and spoke arrangement to reach out to customers, where the bank does not have branches," Ms Banerjee said. This implied that the bank would reach to these customers from contiguous branches.

The bank would also increase its staff strength to 100 to conform to its increase in high networth individuals (HNI).

However, Ms Banerjee said that in picking up these HNIs, the bank would look for individuals with assets in excess of Rs 2.5 crore.

ABN-Amro's focus would be heads of small and medium enterprises (SME). In building a critical mass of customers, the bank would also conform to internationally accepted `Know Your Customer' norms, she said.

"We had such norms in place even before the RBI's guidelines," she added.

Asked whether the focus was a departure from inclusive banking to exclusive banking, Ms Bannerjee said that many of the bank's private banking customers were earlier customers of the bank's retail business.

In private banking business, which includes advisory services for management of investment portfolios, and asset allocations, the bank generated returns of about 100 basis points of the AUM.