ABN Amro, DBS, State Bank of Mauritius apply for WOS

Reserve Bank deputy governor R Gandhi today said three foreign bankers-- ABN Amro, DBS and State Bank of Mauritius have applied for operating as wholly-owned subsidiaries (WOSes) in the country.
"ABN Amro, DBS and State Bank of Mauritius have applied to convert their franchises in the country into local subsidiaries," Gandhi told reporters after delivering the MR Pai memorial lecture here this evening.
Dutch lender ABN Amro Bank is the third bank to have applied to RBI to convert its franchise in the country to local subsidiary.
The largest Singaporean bank DBS was the first one to do so, followed by State Bank of Mauritius.

Operating as a WOS is favoured by the RBI as it helps ring-fence the local unit from any pressures that its parent may face in its home market or in its other international operations, and the demand for getting them incorporated locally have been on ever since the 2008 global credit crisis.
There are close to 100 foreign lenders operating in the country at present and all of them operate through branches or as representative offices.

In November 2013, RBI had come out with a new policy, incentivising WOS and also ensured changes in laws, including tax and stamp duty benefits and near-total national treatments in opening branches in non-urban areas among others, but none of the lenders fell in line so far.

Under the new RBI rules, those foreign lenders with 20 or more branches have to mandatorily get local subsidiaries.
Also, those entering the country after August 2010 would have to mandatorily follow local subsidiary route.
Currently, only British lenders -- Standard Chartered and HSBC-- and American lender Citigroup have over 50 branches each and fall under the mandatory WOS route.
Since the RBI started calling for WOS route, only three large banks entered the country -- ICBC of China in 2012, FirstRand Bank of South Africa in 2013 and Doha Bank of Sultanate of Qatar in June and all of them had said if the regulations require they would be willing to go the WOS route.