JP Morgan eyeing Indian expansion
(27 October 2015 – India) The largest bank in the U.S., JP Morgan Chase, has sought out branch licenses in India to add to its wholesale banking operations.
The bank is in discussions with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) over permits for centres to support corporate client services including cash management, foreign-currency payments and trade finance.
Its first and only Indian wholesale branch was established in Mumbai in 1994.
“We’re servicing our clients out of India from Mumbai, but we’re looking at other centres where our target-market clients are in those centres,” said Muhammad Aurangzeb, Asia Pacific chief executive officer of JPMorgan’s global corporate bank unit.
“We’re following our clients’ priorities and India is still coming up in a big way,” he said.
However, the bank must comply with an RBI rule demanding foreign banks with 20 branches or less to extend 32 percent (increased to 40 percent by 2020) of all on-shore lending to the so-called “priority sector”, which includes farmers and smaller businesses.
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