ICICI Bank inaugurates Singapore branch

Lender seeks to upgrade profile under the “qualified full banking” privileges from Monetary Authority of Singapore.

ICICI Bank on Thursday opened a retail branch in Singapore, with India's High Commissioner T. C. A. Raghavan symbolically signing the first account.

With this, the bank sought to raise its profile under the “Qualified full banking” (QFB) privileges obtained from the Monetary Authority of Singapore in April this year. State Bank of India is the only other Indian banking institution to have been granted such a QFB licence in the City-State. Several other banks from India still operate here on terms that do not equal the wide spectrum of privileges of a QFB licence.

Dr. Raghavan said Thursday's event did in a sense “animate the evolution of the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement” between India and Singapore. He saw a role for the banking sector in meeting the funding requirements of India's growing infrastructure sector, variously estimated in the range of $500 billion to $1.5 trillion in the next seven-to-eight years.

View the full story in The Hindu.