Review on ICICI Bank
Preface:-
*This review will be canvassing following scopes of ICICI Bank
Signing in the bank, services offered, customer-orientation, Network and convenience of banking.
Signing in the bank:
Signing in with the bank is easy & happy experience, you can visit
a bank branch near to you or even you can choose to call one of their
representative at your door step. Immediately after filling in the
form, with 2 photographs, an identity proof & residence proof, you
are all done and would immediately receive the welcome kit containing -
debit card, card pin, Internet banking user id & password and a
cheque book. And within a couple of days your account will be active.
Services offered:
You name any financial requirement of yours & there you are at any
branch of ICICI bank to find all of those services at a single place.
Though almost all banks are having that kind of setup. However the
clarity of the services with ICICI bank and even Life insurance
product, General insurance, Mutual Funds all at a single place. And
every passing day they have been adding many services.
Customer orientation & network:
Great
customer orientation, ease of banking, ICICI has worked hard to offer
you the convenience. Note this - my bank branch is almost 1000 KM(in
other city) from the city I currently live in, but I can easily operate
all the services from my present city itself & I need not transfer
my bank account to my present city. Only need is to change is my
communication address and we are done. Talk of Internet banking and
ICICI has provided this from very early times when other prominent
banks were not even thinking of it. The module of Internet banking is
user friendly and you can do all the transactions right there without
visiting any bank branch, you name it - transfer funds to anywhere, pay bills, order for new cheque book, stop cheque payment, recharge your mobile.
Additionally
they have added further convenience, you can put a standing instruction
for a certain kind of fund transfer & bill payment, provide a
recurring date of the month & each month it will automatically
carry the task on the given date, be it your house rent, credit card
payment, electricity or transferring funds every month to your parents
or child's bank account. Hence no missing schedule. I can tell you from my personal experience, that it has mean quite a long time that I have visited any ICICI bank branch.
Another great thing is that you can add all your banking relation with a single Internet banking ID,
be it credit card, your housing or other loans, your fixed or recurring
deposit and off course your salaried or saving bank account.
A very innovative and strong feature of ICICI bank is that they keep analysing your association with the bank and based on **that they keep adding privileged services to their old-customers.
I can tell this from my personal experience.** They add pre-approved
loans and offers to your account based on your relation(how long you
have been banking with and what kind of record you have for the
account). When I wanted to purchase a car, it just took me 1 day to get my loan approved and that too without visiting the bank branch.
I called their phone-banking, with few verifications, they informed my
eligibility & the amount I can get financed and I was all done, by
tomorrow morning I got my approval reference number, I visited the car
showroom and I was all done. Wasn't that great?
Their
account mangers(which you find in your online banking module) are
prompt in their response, based on kind of relation you get cheque pick
up services, cash delivery, Demand draft on phone & delivered to
your house. All of this convenience will surely make you lazy.
Talking about Network- They are second only to SBI
in terms of ATM centers and they have branch presence in almost all
district head quarters of India. They are phone banking service is
quite efficient despite the huge number of customer base. They have
also made it easier for transactions in branch even after having huge
number of customers; they have started token service in almost all
branches so that you can sit on chair and wait for your turn. And you
need not wait too long, the staff at branches are quite efficient and
friendly.
Conclusion*
ICICI bank has been always on the path
of improvement & innovative to serve their customer efficiently,
they have been fast in curtailing any shortcomings. For ex- with
increased customer base, they increased the number of staff, automated
note counting machines, packet-currency deposit system etc. I forgot to
add that they have added a small mobile application, which you can
download in your mobile(any GPRS enabled & JAVA based phone) and
can easily do transactions right from your finger tips. I confess to be a die hard loyal customer of ICICI bank since the day I earned my first salary cheque - which went into my ICICI bank account. Great going ICICI.
