Calcutta, July 1: Wealth management outfits are setting up shop in the state to cash in on the growing number of high net worth individuals. The latest to pitch tent is American Express.

The bank has put in place a dedicated team for the purpose.

“We are aggressively hiring people to grow our financial advisory services business in Bengal and adjacent states,” said Vishal Kapoor, a senior director and head of financial advisory services, American Express, India.

“We are offering free advisory services to our clients. We also actively manage their portfolios, but we don’t own the financial products in which the money is invested. We have tieups with other portfolio management service providers and mutual fund houses and invest our clients’ money in their products,” Kapoor said.

Kapoor, however, did not give the details of the number of clients or the size of the assets under management.

DSP Merrill Lynch, which started operations in the state a year ago, has 88 accounts in its fold, amounting to Rs 600 crore.

“We offer this service to people who can invest a minimum of Rs 2.5 crore,” said Pradeep Dokania, managing director, head (global private client), DSP Merrill Lynch Ltd.

ASK, another portfolio management service provider, also touched base last year and has several accounts.

The average ticket size of ASK’s clients is Rs 3 crore, according to Asit Koticha, managing director of the company. ASK manages assets worth Rs 2,000 crore and 10 per cent of them is from the state.

“Most of our investors have been from traditional sectors such as tea, jute and mining. However, we also have clients from real estate, information technology and financial services and their number is growing,” said Dokania.

The latest world wealth report by Capgemini and Merill Lynch estimated that India has more than one lakh people each having financial assets over Rs 4.5 crore. “Around 10 to 12 per cent of them are from the eastern region,” said Kapoor.