By IANS,
Dubai : The state-owned Union Bank of India (UBI) is planning a major overseas expansion after opening representative offices in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Shanghai in China last year, a newspaper report said.
“We have applied for permission to open offices in 10 more locations abroad, including in areas like Sydney and Canada,” the Khaleej Times daily quoted UBI chairman and managing director M.V. Nair as saying.
“We have already opened our representative offices in Shanghai and Abu Dhabi last year,” he said.
Stating that the company was planning to diversify its operations, Nair told the paper: “We have already launched a joint venture with Daichi Insurance of Japan to enter the insurance sector. We are also working out an arrangement with a leading Belgium-based asset management firm to launch joint venture in the mutual funds sector.”
Additionally, UBI has launched several products for overseas Indians, Nair said.
“The remittances from the NRIs (non-resident Indians) will now be transferred online to the accounts of the beneficiaries. We’ve introduced an SMS alert system to give feedbacks to the NRIs on the delivery of their remittance,” he was quoted as saying.
Nair said beneficiaries would get an SMS alert as soon as the remittances were transferred into their accounts, and they could make the withdrawal from any of the bank’s 33,000 ATMs in India.
UBI is a public sector unit with 55.43 percent of its share capital held by the central government.
The bank came out with its initial public offer (IPO) in August 2002 and a follow-on public offer in February 2006.
As of now, 44.57 percent of its share capital is held by institutions, individuals and others, according to a statement on the bank’s website.