Buoyed by an impressive show by the global banking and markets division, HSBC's pre-tax profit for its India operations rose by 22 per cent to $813 million in the year ended December 2011.
This makes India the sixth largest profit centre after Hong Kong, China, Britain, Brazil and Canada.
The London-headquartered lender's pre-tax profit from India operations stood at $679 million in 2010.
HSBC group's pre-tax profit rose by 15 per cent to $21.9 billion for the year, driven mainly by robust growth in the Asian region.
"Once again, our mainstay global banking and markets division, coupled with our commercial banking arm, which primarily involves small corporates, continued to do well during the year, though the overall loan book remained more or less flattish," HSBC India country head Naina Lal Kidwai said.
A healthy 31 per cent spike in profit from commercial banking that offset the weak performance in Europe, also boosted the earnings, it said.
HSBC India's advances rose to $6,014 million in 2011, while deposits rose close to $12,000 million.
Another reason for the good numbers was the very strong growth in the wealth management business, Kidwai said, adding, a decline in loan impairment charges also helped boost profitability. But she refused to share the absolute numbers, or percentage, saying it is not specified in the group result.
However, she refused to comment on any future guidance such as whether the bank will touch the magic $1-billion profit mark in 2012.
However, she said the group Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver has set fiscal 2013 as the target for crossing the $1-billion profitability mark.
Kidwai also noted that HSBC continues to remain the No.1 foreign bank in the domestic bonds market.
The $813-million profit makes India the sixth largest profit centre for HSBC (same as last year), after Hong Kong, China, Britain, Brazil and Canada, she said.
She said overall there has been an improvement in credit quality and also there has been "a marked decline in delinquencies during the year under review".
The bank, which had last year arranged the country's first yuan bond, said going forward it will continue to diversify foreign currency pool.
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