Expat Indian millionaires are in the spotlight
Expatriate Indians are becoming increasingly important as private banking customers. The Asia-Pacific Wealth Report, published by consultancy Capgemini and the private banking arm of Merrill Lynch, stated an increasing number of wealth management firms are taking note of the more than 150,000 Indian millionaires residing outside their country, and that their numbers and aggregate wealth are set to continue to grow.
This segment of non-resident Indians generate an aggregate income of more than US$100 billion a year. The greatest concentration of these people live in Hong Kong, followed by Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Japan. Others live in Australia and the Philippines.
Historically, these customers had tended to put their money in investments abroad, but this had begun to change in recent years, fuelled by industrial reforms in India and the liberalisation of trade and investments.
Last year, this group remitted US$24 billion back to India - a significant increase from US$2 billion in 1991, the report said. It goes on to highlight that this reflected their ties to their home country, and suggested that the lion's share of this remittance was being poured back to purchase return-generating investments in securities.
However, the report said that while this segment was knowledgeable about investing, they tended to engage the services of multiple wealth management firms, based on what they perceived to be each individual company's strengths and weaknesses. It was not usual for expatriate Indians to deal with more than three wealth management companies, the report said.
The report said that while there were opportunities for wealth managers to offer a one-stop solution to this segment, this could only be achieved if they tailored their services accordingly. It said that research had suggested that expatriate Indians were drawn to products that exclusively targeted their community. They were also attracted to products that enabled either direct or indirect investment back into India.
The report also said that because expatriate Indian millionaires were relatively younger than their global peers, advisers needed to establish a dynamic relationship with their clients at an early stage.
