Reliance Money ties up with arm of Al Rostamani Group

Reliance Money ties up with arm of Al Rostamani GroupAssistant Editor, Business (BY LUCIA DORE)KHALEEJ TIMES 13 February 2008

DUBAI — Reliance Money has tied up with an arm of the Al Rostamani Group, Dubai International Securities (DIS), to offer its financial products and services to NRIs. It is the first time that Reliance Money has offered its financial services outside India.

DIS will offer Reliance's entire range of financial services to customers in the UAE, including its portfolio management services (PMS). "We are targeting upward of $1.25 billion for our portfolio management services in the first year", Sudip Bandyopadhyay, director and CEO of Reliance Money, said. This service is being launched with a starting "threshold of only $50,000" to tap into vast untapped opportunities in the region, he added.

Reliance Money is targeting the two million NRIs living in the UAE, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait and intends to have a presence in all these countries by the end of the year, he said. "We plan to tap over one million customers in the first year itself," he continued, adding: "Our business model is to provide a range of financial services to a larger section of society." NRIs residing in Saudi Arabia and Africa will also be a target at a later stage.

Apart from the portfolio management service, Reliance will also offer a range of Indian mutual funds — 17 in total — and a free mobile portal that will allow users to access free real time market information. It will also offer interactive chat facilities with experts so that customers can obtain market research and guidance.

In time, Reliance may also provide trading kiosks throughout the UAE, said Bandyopadhyay. Such kiosks, which enable customers to execute their own trades, are highly popular in India and Reliance intends to have 10,000 kiosks installed there by the end of the year, he said. He also said: "Our objective is to install kiosks in the UAE but we need regulatory approvals."

In the UAE, fees for Reliance's products will be charged on a brokerage basis, not on a flat-fee basis, as they are in India. "Charges cannot be on a flat-fee basis at this stage. The regulatory environment does not give us the choice," said Bandyopadhyay.

The partnership with the Al Rostamani Group, which has money exchange houses throughout the UAE, is purely for distribution purposes. Al Rostamani has no equity in Reliance Money, P. Krishna Murthy, Al Rostamani's CEO of Financial Services said. Costs and revenues will be shared between the two parties.