Last week, British banking giant Barclays declared that it had secured a licence from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) to operate as a foreign approved deposit-taking institution (ADI) in the country. Its Sydney branch is estimated to launch services as a foreign bank by April 2022.
The foreign ADI licence will allow Britain's third-largest lender by market value to speed up its plans to provide investors with easier access to Australia. Barclays said it contemplates Australia as an important part of its growth plans in the region. Setting up a local branch is part of the plan to grow its Australian client by offering its services to more corporate and organized clients.
"This foreign ADI license reinforces our commitment to Australia and enables us to proactively serve our clients with our global Corporate and Investment Bank platform, supporting their cross-border growth ambitions even further," Barclays' head of Asia Pacific Jaideep Khanna said.
Khanna is based in Mumbai. India is where Barclays has the greatest number of employees outside of the UK.
The Australia news comes less than two weeks after Barclays revealed plans to expand in Asia and in particular to beef up its private banking business in Singapore, and investment banking in Australia.
In August, the bank said it was pumping in more than USD 400 million into its India operations to help grow its corporate and investment banking businesses in the country. It is Barclays' latest capital infusion into the country in the last 30 years. Barclays said the asset would help grow its corporate, debt investment banking, and private client businesses.
To bolster its wealth management business in Singapore, Barclays recently hired senior bankers to be based in its Singapore office. In August, it approved Evonne Tan, who has over 25 years of financial services experience, as head of Barclays Private Bank in Singapore. Following that, it named Adrian Khoo, formerly from Julius Baer, head of strategic client coverage, and hired Jamie Huang, previously at Bank of Singapore, as a private banker.
In recent years, Singapore has established itself as a leading global wealth management centre.
In Deloitte's 2021 competitive ranking of wealth