Blitz India Business
NEW DELHI: Financial centres are built in decades and reported in decimals. This one has been growing at a rate that makes the decimals unnecessary. Banking assets at the International Financial Services Centre in GIFT City crossed $106.7 billion in February 2026 and stand above $111 billion by mid-year — against $14 billion in September 2020, a rise of roughly eight times in under six years.
The base underneath the number has widened as fast as the number itself. Thirty-seven banks now operate International Banking Units at GIFT IFSC — 20 foreign and 17 domestic — a roster that includes DBS, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Citi, HSBC, JP Morgan, MUFG, Mizuho, Société Générale and Standard Chartered alongside the large Indian lenders. The most consequential recent addition is not a bank at all: the Foreign Currency Settlement System, live since October 2025, lets IFSC banking units settle foreign currency transactions locally rather than through correspondent banks abroad. That is a plumbing change, and plumbing changes are what actually determine whether an offshore centre is used or merely registered in.
Eightfold in under six years: $14 billion of banking assets in September 2020 to above $111 billion by mid-2026, across 37 international banking units.
The test of a financial centre is not how many institutions register there. It is how much business they book there when nobody is watching.
At a Glance
• Banking assets: above $111 billion by mid-2026; $106.7 billion in February 2026
• Starting point: $14 billion in September 2020 — growth of more than seven times
• Banking units: 37 — 20 foreign banks, 17 domestic
• Present: DBS, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Citi, HSBC, JP Morgan, MUFG, Mizuho, Société Générale, Standard Chartered and major Indian lenders
• Infrastructure: Foreign Currency Settlement System live since October 2025, enabling local settlement of foreign currency transactions
• Scale marker: more than 1,000 entities registered across the centre
The economic case for the centre is straightforward once stated plainly. A large share of the international financing of Indian companies — external commercial borrowings, dollar bonds, trade finance, aircraft and ship leasing, derivatives hedging — has historically been arranged in Singapore, Dubai or London, which means the fee income, the employment and the regulatory oversight sat offshore. Booking that same business in GIFT keeps the intermediation in India without forcing it into rupees or onto the domestic balance sheet, which is precisely the design intent. The growth in banking assets is the measurable proxy for how much of that migration has actually happened, and eight times in six years is a substantial answer.
Three areas will determine the next phase, and each is a work in progress rather than a problem. The first is depth in non-banking activity — fund management, insurance and reinsurance, and bullion — where registrations have grown quickly but assets under management remain small relative to the banking book; a centre dominated by one activity is more fragile than one with several. The second is talent: an international financial centre needs a resident pool of structuring, legal, compliance and risk professionals, and building that pool in Gandhinagar is a longer project than building the towers was. The third is regulatory consistency, where the unified authority’s track record has been good and its principal asset is predictability — global institutions commit balance sheet to jurisdictions whose rules they can forecast for five years. On present evidence India is doing the difficult, unphotogenic parts in the right order, and the settlement system going live is the clearest sign of it.