IndusInd Bank to fund commodity trading

IndusInd Bank will soon foray into commodity finance against dematerialised warehouse receipts.

The bank has already secured approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for providing commodity finance, and is currently in talks with commodity exchanges and Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) for launching packaged lending products.

A senior IndusInd Bank official said: "Discussions are at an advanced stage wherein we are working out ways to detect and avoid doubling of accounts and finalise securitisation norms required to be followed by the underlying warehouses."

Commodity is emerging as a growing business, and the total size of the market is almost three times of the equity market.

IndusInd Bank today announced a strategic alliance with Abu Dhabi-based Union National Bank (UNB) to offer banking services to non-resident Indians (NRIs) settled in the United Arab Emirates.

Bhaskar Ghose, managing director of IndusInd Bank, said the alliance will enable both banks to access business opportunities in each other's home countries without any capital outlay. The Union National Bank is jointly
owned by the governments of Abu Dhabi and Dubai and has total assets of $9.5 billion.

The two banks plan to offer NRI customers services in the areas of remittances, wealth management advisory, distribution of third party products and investment banking.

Mohammad Nasr Abdeen, CEO of UNB, said the bank plans to make use of the IndusInd network to make up for the absence of a physical presence in India.