Barclays has introduced a new service that allows Indians living in Britain to send money to the sub-continent via its network of high street branches.
The move, which also allows Indians to manage their rupee investments from afar, reflects an appetite among international banks to tap the growing wealth of South Asians.
There are more than one million people of Indian origin living in the UK and their numbers are rising as companies recognise and recruit from India’s educated and highly skilled workforce. Barclays, chasing a share of the British market, has set up two savings accounts: one to allow customers to manage rupee transactions in India in any foreign currency; and another to manage their rupee income in India. The service is available initially in 50 branches in London and will spread to more than 70 branches around the country by August.
The bank has also launched the service in the United Arab Emirates, which has a large Indian population drawn by lucrative job opportunities in construction and oil. Barclays hopes to steal customers from well-established Indian banks, such as the State Bank of India, and compete with fast-growing private Indian banks, such as ICICI, which has six branches in the UK.
Nonresident Indians (NRI) are estimated to hold $32 billion (£15.9 billion) in bank accounts in India, making them an attractive target for financial services. Many funnel their cash home through property investments in India.
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“Remittances are important but a means to an end,” Arvinder Bharath, Barclays’ global head of NRI banking, said. “It is more about the ability to manage your financial affairs in India from the UK. The professional segment is big, as more and more are migrating or becoming secondees.”
HSBC, Standard Chartered, Citibank, ABN Amro and ING already cater to nonresident Indians. All are competing in a huge global remittance market. In a $300 billion-a-year market, India receives about $30 billion, of which Britain accounts for up to $6 billion. Most of the cash sent by the 20 million-strong Indian diaspora is from workers in the United States and in the Middle East.