ICICI Bank in tie-up talks with Russia's MBRD for mortgage lending
10 Apr 2008
Mumbai: ICICI Bank, India's biggest private sector lender and the country's second biggest home loan provider, is in talks with Moscow Bank for Reconstruction and Development, an arm of Sistema, for selling mortgage loan products and trade finance in Russia.
ICICI Bank will design the mortgage products which will be sold by MBRD in the Russian market. The tie-up with ICICI Bank will be on revenue-sharing basis, MBRD Chairman Sergey Zaytsev said.
MBRD is a medium-sized bank in Russia with 166 branches in 34 regions of the country. It has a retail loan portfolio of $800 million, as of 1 January 2008, and total assets of $3 billion.
ICICI Bank has a subsidiary in Russia, ICICI Bank Eurasia LLC, but it has a very small branch network. A tie-up with MBRD will enable ICICI Bank to penetrate many Russian regions which offer good opportunity to lenders in mortgage financing.
At present, mortgage financing is less than 3 per cent of Russia's GDP, while it is more than 100 per cent in western countries.
MBRD, meanwhile, plans to follow the footsteps of its parent Sistema and enter India through a representative office or branch office.
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