ICICI Bank and State Bank of India plan to strengthen their businesses in Canada through branding exercises and increasing market exposure.

Over 70 per cent of ICICI's 2.5 lakh customers are non-Indians and it is keen on positioning itself as a bank for the Canadians.

“We have recently rebranded and repositioned ourselves and this has paid off in terms of increasing business. Our balance sheet size is $5.5 billion of which $4 billion are customer deposits,” said Mr Sriram H. Iyer, President and CEO, ICICI Bank.

The bank, with a loan book of around $3 billion, has nine branches and plans to add two to three more in a year, he added. It has also been focusing on deposit mobilisation, residential mortgages and corporate lending by tapping companies with India links.

SBI's plans

On the other hand, over 75 per cent of SBI's clientele comprises Indians. It started its Canadian operations in 1982 is keen on increasing its personal remittance business.

Mr Sunil K. Tandon, President and CEO, SBI Canada said the business is worth $184 million and growing at 16 per cent per year.

“We are now working on introducing online requests for remittances. Once that is done, commission charges will come down and our business will grow further,” he added.

SBI is in talks with Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal to strengthen its retail verticals, roll out new services and redesign its branches.

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