Mar 11, 2002 08:01 PM
6152 Views
(Updated Mar 11, 2002 08:01 PM)
The future of personal banking will very likely be one where an individual can get all his or her banking or rather personal financial needs taken care of by a single entity. Of all the financial service providers that we deal with today, the banks seem best suited to become our financial service providers. In anticipation of such a move, many players in financial services have started moves towards becoming a complete financial service provider. Universal banks are likely to be one format of a financial service provider or ICICI Bank with its moves in the recent past seems all set to become a Universal Bank ? an entity that will be your personal finance supermarket.
Yes, a personal finance supermarket, because when a bank such as ICICI Bank can cater to all your requirements of personal finance products, why should you sign up with a plain vanilla bank and many other service providers, one service provider for each financial service need that you have. Can you think of any bank where you can, apart from doing all your banking, buy bonds, invest in mutual funds, sign up for general and life insurance, apply for different types of loans or invest in the stock market. Such a bank need not be confined to your imagination ? it already exists to a great extent today ? and it is ICICI Bank. It is the only bank in India today that can serve as a one stop shop for your personal banking, mutual fund and bond investing, stock trading, credit cards, general and life insurance, personal pension planning and personal, vehicle and home loans. ICICI Bank is able to do all this by its own service offerings or by offering services of the other subsidiaries of ICICI. Of course, it is rather early in the day to say that all this is happening very smoothly, because a customer of ICICI Bank could still buy financial products not just from ICICI Bank but through any other intermediaries or distributors in the financial sector.
The specifics of the great benefits of banking with ICICI Bank are that it is just beyond comparison to any of the PSU banks and among private banks or new generation banks, has a size and reach that make it the most well-spread and easily accessible bank in India today. On any count, the reach of ICICI Bank beats those of its competitors and with the acquisition of Bank of Madura more than a year ago, whose branches will soon sport the ICICI Bank logo, ICICI Bank is spread to have a much larger network, particularly in south-India. The reverse merger of its parent, ICICI, with ICICI Bank is yet another development that will increase ICICI Bank?s reach, but how exactly,will have to be waited for and seen after 1 April, 2002, when ICICI and ICICI Bank will function as one giant entity, India?s first and truly universal bank.
ICICI Bank provides its customers all features of modern banking that all other modern Indian banks do ? a debit card, an ATM card, internet banking facility and phone banking facility all at no cost to the customer. Most of their employees I have interacted with have been courteous and helpful. When there have been problems, I have found them understand the issue and help resolve it to the customer?s satisfaction. Their ATM network is the largest in India ? more than 700 strong and in keeping with the aggressive style of the ICICI family ? is growing very fast. These ATM?s are located not just at the ICICI Bank branches, but at other locations like supermarkets and petrol stations where one is likely to go frequently. Why not spend a few minutes at such off-branch ATM?s depositing a cheque in the cheque drop boxes or withdrawing some cash or just checking one?s account balance. This is anyday better than making a half day trip to a branch for banking transactions.
The Internet Banking facility called Infinity has the largest internet banking user group in India at more than 1 million users, all signed up in just the past 2 years. The best feature of Infinity is its very high emphasis on security which one encounters while using it. The site has 128 bit encryption, a fairly high level of security to protect users from hackers and also regular system enforced changing of passwords to ensure that users do not keep using the same password for long and possibly have hackers intercept and misuse the users? password. Infinity requires a user to have separate login and transaction password, which is one more security layer to protect the user. Infinity also insists on the passwords having special characters from the keyboard which make the passwords difficult to hack, if not impossible. ICICI Bank has signed up with many other service and utility providers whose bills can now be paid through Infinity. This saves an ICICI Bank customer the bother of having to fill up paperwork or stand in queues to pay bills. The most recent innovation of ICICI Bank is allowing inter-bank transfer of funds ? which will enable you to move funds from your ICICI Bank to your account at any other bank.
I am sure you are now more than convinced that this is the bank for you!! If you are the typical urban professional with no time for banking, then ICICI Bank is THE bank for you. For all transactions requiring your physical presence such as cash withdrawal or cheque deposit, use ICICI Bank?s ATM network and for all transactions where you only need to access your account, use ICICI Bank?s Infinity Net Banking facility. ICICI Bank has recently started a facility whereby an ICICI Bank customer with any relationship to other ICICI subsidiaries can have a single T-PIN allotted for transacting with the entire family of ICICI subsidiaries through a single T-PIN. If this is not the future of personal banking, what is? What are you waiting for? Go, open an account with ICICI Bank to be at the future, when it arrives soon!!!
