Asia Risk 15: Shilpa Kumar, ICICI

Shilpa Kumar has championed the development of modern financial derivatives in India. The ICICI veteran talks with Asia Risk about some of the milestone events during the past 15 years. By Sarfraz Thind

Derivatives have existed in India in one form or another since the 19th century. Early instruments included badla, a leveraged form of equity investment, and up until the last 30 years, the business was relatively small and informal. The first tentative steps towards developing a liquid derivatives market began with the liberalisation of the forward contract in 1992. Until February of that year, foreign exchange forwards were not allowed to be cancelled, except where the underlying transactions