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ICICI - Bank or Bankrupt?

Every other day there is a buzz in the financial world that India’s largest private sector bank may collapse the very same day. Could this happen? Is it possible that all the money in your account could just get washed out overnight?

The banking regulatory body, the RBI, has been immensely criticized in the past for its intervening, rather poking-the-nose habit. Even financial experts have mocked at the thought-to-be importance it gives to rules and guidelines, that curb a bank’s freedom. Now, after the collapse of the US financial system, the same people are eating their own words. The RBI has done such good a job as a regulator to bring every action of banks under the scanner, its vividly evident that the Indian financial system has survived well through the past 6 months.

To be more realistic, one should realize that ICICI is India’s most risk taking bank! With the biggest chain of banks among the private lenders, the bank’s infrastructure is huge. But what of these rumours that it might fall? Its only panic that fails a bank, not the bank itself. When every account holder pulls out his money from the bank in a short span of time, the bank cannot pay it. Not even Bank of America can do it.

Still, many poeple in public sector banks believe that at the rate the bank is expanding like a bubble, a small pin would do to burst it. I personally know of poeple who have transferred large sums of money out of their ICICI accounts into other public sector banks. This is what kills a bank. A consolation - in case any banks fails, every account holder would be refunded a maximum amount of 10,000 bucks. So its very safe to hold less than that amount in your ICICI account. My advice is, if you are looking at opening an account, do go for a public sector bank like SBI, Indian Bank etc., rather than a private one. Although the service would be pretty ordinary, the state of economic affairs demands it. The Government is more likely to save a public sector bank than a private one.

There are clear indicators that the Indian financial sector would not be adversely affected due to the recession in the US. It is so also unlikely that a Bank in India would collapse unless it is induced by the panic of herd mentality. Nevertheless, caution is advised

Tags: ICICI, ICICI bank, ICICI bank fail, ICICI bankrupt, ICICI fail, RBI

ICICI Online Banking

This article gives you complete information on ICICI Bank’s Net Banking facility. Ever wanted to manage your bank accounts, transfer funds, manage your investments, pay your credit card bills at the click of your mouse? As a proud user of ICICI’s online banking facility i could boast of all these with vanity! Since the opening of my account with ICICI about a year and a half back, i have till date not walked into an ICICI branch (not that i’ve not been using it, but have been, profusely!).

A customer is promptly given an online user id and password on opening an account. You could then check the account balance online. Linking of accounts is an excellent facility provided. If you have multiple account with ICICI, you could link them all and transfer funds among them in an instant. You could link your ICICI credit card account with this and dynamically view the transactions, available credit limit etc.. You could also pay your credit card bills online in a jiffy. You can transfer funds to other ICICI and non-ICICI accounts online using NSDL transfers. Although you should be surprised if the transfer happens in a couple of hours. NSDL fund transfers to non-ICICI bank accounts generally take about a day to occur. Any case, its a lot faster than dropping a cheque - the online banking equivalent of a snail mail! Besides, transfers to other ICICI accounts occurs in minutes.

You could also link your ICICI Direct Demat account to your banking account and view your holdings. Coming back to fund transfers, there are two layers of security provided,wherein you are asked to type in your transaction password and also enter specific numbers from behind your debit/ATM card (and its not your 16-digit card number). All this is to take care that your transaction is authentic. So if at all your Net Banking ID and password do fall into the wrong hands, it would be impossible to transfer funds (something like a read-only mode). To add to your elation, all this comes at absolutely no extra cost!!

Tags: Banking, ICICI, ICICI bank, net banking, Online, Online Banking, safe banking, secure banking