India, UK launch financial partnership

NEW DELHI: India and United Kingdom today launched the UK-India Financial Partnership to strengthen links between the financial services industries of the two nations.

"The Partnership will strengthen links between the Financial Services industries of both countries and deepen cooperation between London and Mumbai, two of the World's leading Financial Centres," the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

The Partnership will initially focus on the collaboration to develop the corporate bond market, mutual sharing of expertise on banking regulation and capitalisation.

It will also focus on enhancing financial training and qualification, financial inclusion and developing programme around the opportunities to improve cross border provision of financial and insurance services.

Both the industry leaders will convene working groups of professionals to examine key areas of common interest and will report the progress and make recommendations to the Minister of Finance, India and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, UK ahead of the next UK-India Economic and Financial Dialogue in 2015.

It may be recalled that at the seventh UK-India Economic and Financial Dialogue held in Delhi on July 8, 2014, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne had welcomed the deepening of Financial Services links between the two countries.