Kotak Bank appears as a leading private sector bank in India

Kotak Mahindra Bank a new generation bank has become of the leading players in the private banking sector in India. In the interview given to ET NOW, C Jayaram, executive director of Kotak Mahindra Bank for the first time revealed its assets under management and said, “We have emerged as one of the leading players in the industry with assets under management in the range of Rs 13,000 crore.”

An anonymous senior official working with a foreign bank said, “Assets under management of Rs 13,000 crore will surely put Kotak in the top two, if not the number one player in the space”.

Mostly private banks very rarely disclose information about their assets under management, but players like DSP Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank have always been recognized as key players in this segment. But, both DSP Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank do not disclose their assets under management as a matter of policy.

Kotak Mahindra Bank categorizes its private banking clients, as individuals having capacity to invest surplus of over Rs 5 crore (or $1 million). The same trend is followed by other banks also.

Mr Jayaram said in the past year also, Kotak’s client base in the private banking business was quite big and the at present bank is having a clientele base of 1,500 from net worth families. He added, “There is a large base of HNIs in the country. This has been rising and will be on the rise. There are more people being added to the universe every year, and it’s a function of the way India is progressing”.

In the next few years bank will be looking for expansion of their business in the private banking sector.

On the other hand wealth managers believe Indian HNIs are searching for alternate asset classes.

Mr Jayaram said, “Initially, this was a space where there were very few asset classes. But the new generation of HNIs is moving away from just equity and fixed income into other asset classes like real estate, commodities, private equity and structured products”.

He also believes that newer and younger HNIs are ready for aggressive expansion into new asset classes, to get higher returns. According to geographical location these banks get largest clientele base of HNIs from Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.