India’s private-banking opportunity is increasingly shifting towards newly created wealth, with entrepreneurs building fortunes at a pace that is creating demand for diversification, global investments and succession planning. Barclays sees the ability to engage families before major liquidity events such as business sales or partial exits as a key opportunity in India.
In an interview with ETBFSI, Annabelle Bryde, Head of Barclays Private Bank International, and Adrish Ghosh, Head of Barclays Private Bank India, said Indian entrepreneurs continue to carry significant concentration risk as wealth and cash flows remain tied to their businesses. They also discussed the evolution of family offices, rising interest in alternatives and how AI could free bankers from administrative work while strengthening the human advisory relationship. Their comments come days after Barclays’ Ownership Shift report estimated that Indian women could inherit at least ₹73 trillion over the next decade.
Here are the edited excerpts from the interview:
Q: What makes India particularly attractive for Barclays’ international private bank?
Annabelle Bryde: India is a very exciting market because wealth is being newly created. The level of entrepreneurialism, the number of companies being created and their growth rates are remarkable.
In a mature market such as Europe, you are often trying to win assets from another bank or wealth manager. That is inherently harder than being there when new wealth is being created.
If we are there before a business sale, partial sale or another liquidity event, we can help families plan for what happens next. Accompanying clients through that journey gives you the opportunity to become a long-term private banking partner.
Q: Where is the biggest wealth-management gap in India today?
Annabelle Bryde: Diversification. If you are an entrepreneur and most of your wealth and cash flow are tied to one business or industry, you have a very concentrated risk.
The opportunity is to help families think about what happens outside the business, how much liquidity they need, how much risk they want to retain and how they diversify into other assets and geographies.
India is still developing that financialisation of wealth, so there is significant room to build more diversified portfolios.
Q: Does that make newly created wealth more important than inherited wealth for private banks?
Annabelle Bryde: Newly created wealth is particularly attractive because you can be involved before the wealth event rather than after it.
If a business owner is approaching a sale or partial monetisation, the conversation can start much earlier—around liquidity, diversification, tax, succession and what the family wants to achieve with the proceeds.
That is very different from trying to convince someone to move an existing portfolio after the wealth has already been structured elsewhere.
Q: Are Indian family offices becoming competitors to private banks?
Annabelle Bryde: The very largest family offices can build direct relationships with private equity funds and manage a significant amount themselves. But that is a relatively thin slice of the market.
For the broader family-office universe, diversification is important. Families may want different vintages, strategies, geographies and sectors, without having to build relationships with every fund themselves.
A private bank can aggregate demand, provide access and undertake due diligence. That becomes particularly valuable when families are looking beyond India.
Adrish Ghosh: Indian family offices are still relatively young compared with those in the West. Many may have one or two investment specialists, but those individuals cannot necessarily access the entire global opportunity set.
That is where a global institution can add value, particularly when families want to diversify outside India.
Q: Alternatives are attracting interest, but what is stopping larger allocations?
Annabelle Bryde: The appetite is clearly there, but education and familiarity need to catch up.
Private equity, for example, involves a very different time horizon. You could be locking up capital for five, seven years or longer. Clients need to understand the liquidity trade-off and how the asset class behaves through different market conditions.
It is almost like a conveyor belt. You start investing, an investment matures, you invest again, and over time the different vintages become self-sustaining. Getting onto that conveyor belt is important if alternatives are going to become a meaningful part of a family’s portfolio.
Q: What is changing in the next generation of Indian wealth holders?
Adrish Ghosh: The next generation is much more interested in opportunities outside traditional asset classes. New sectors, technology, new-age investments and alternatives are increasingly at the forefront.
Historically, there was a much stronger bias towards real assets in India. That is changing as the next generation becomes more financially sophisticated and thinks more about asset allocation.
Annabelle Bryde: They are also much more globally minded and digitally native. But they want to understand what they are doing. They don’t simply want someone to execute instructions.
Q: How important are cross-border needs becoming for Indian families?
Annabelle Bryde: They are increasingly important. The sweet spot for us is families with businesses, investments and family members across different jurisdictions.
That is where having a global platform becomes particularly relevant. Families may have a business in India, investments elsewhere and children studying or working in another country. They need to think about the whole picture rather than individual assets in individual jurisdictions.
Q: Can AI materially change the economics of private banking?
Annabelle Bryde: I see AI as an enabler of the banker, not a replacement for the banker.
A lot of a banker’s time can go into administrative work. Call summarisation is a simple example, something that previously took 30 or 40 minutes can now be done almost instantly.
That time can instead be spent understanding another client’s situation, wishes and objectives. For complex families, the personal relationship and trust remain extremely important.
Adrish Ghosh: AI will also change client expectations. Clients will expect faster analytics, portfolio reporting and insights.
Internally, we are already using AI extensively. The next step is to use it more effectively in client delivery and improve how quickly we can turn data into useful insights for clients.
Q: What will determine who wins India’s private-banking market over the next five years?
Annabelle Bryde: It will come down to being there early, understanding the family beyond its immediate investment needs and bringing the right expertise at the right time.
India has a huge amount of newly created wealth. The opportunity is not simply to manage that wealth once it exists, but to accompany families through the moments when their wealth changes shape.
That could be a business sale, a new investment, succession or the creation of a family office. If you are part of those conversations early, you have a much better opportunity to become a long-term partner.
- Published On Aug 26, 2026 at 08:18 AM IST
Join the community of 2M+ industry professionals.
Subscribe to Newsletter to get latest insights & analysis in your inbox.
All about ETBFSI industry right on your smartphone!
