India’s first International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) at Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) crossed $100 million worth of business transactions by two banks within three months of the launch of their IFSC Banking Units (IBU) at GIFT IFSC.
YES Bank and Federal Bank have generated business worth $100 million from services such as buyers' credit, external commercial borrowings (ECBs), accepting deposits and providing credit facilities to wholly-owned subsidiaries/ joint ventures of Indian companies registered abroad, a statement said here.
YES Bank was the first to set up an IBU at GIFT IFSC in October 2015 and Federal Bank’s IBU started functioning in November 2015.
These IBUs provide services such as factoring/ forfeiting of export receivables, treasury activities such as overseas money market operations, investments in overseas securities, and transactions in derivatives and structured products, amongst others.
A unit at GIFT IFSC is equivalent to a foreign branch and hence facilitates the bank to function as such from within India.
Ajay Pandey, MD & Group CEO of GIFT City said, “More than a dozen banks and insurance players are going to commence operations at GIFT IFSC in the coming months. The IFSC at GIFT is attracting a lot of interest from the financial services sector in India, especially from banks, insurance companies and capital market players who want to tap the global market. We expect the next big milestone of $1 billion business transactions at GIFT IFSC will be achieved shortly.”
Manish Vora, CEO of the IBU branch of YES Bank said, “Business momentum has been building up well, and given the positive feedback from clients, we expect a significant ramp-up in volumes over the next few months. Our focus in this phase is to meet the foreign currency banking requirements of our existing and new clients.”
Echoing similar sentiments, Tomy John, Vice-President, Federal Bank said, "GIFT IBU has widened our geographical presence and we are able to provide enhanced business solutions and opportunities to our existing clientele. It has also helped us reach new clients in different geographies. We are in the process of exploring more avenues for international business in the days to come."