is interest compound on your 5 year fixed rate account?

Thrugelmir

swaledalelass wrote: »

I do find ICICI the most difficult savings account to deal with and will not be using them again.

Has it ever crossed your mind that the bank is run on Islamic principles and therefore Sharia law. So while maintaining these also has to also comply with FSA regulation and UK banking law.

dgaf

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Has it ever crossed your mind that the bank is run on Islamic principles and therefore Sharia law. So while maintaining these also has to also comply with FSA regulation and UK banking law.

Sorry OP for going slightly off topic here, but I was not aware that ICICI Bank (India’s largest private bank) was run on Islamic principles as a whole.

Although ICICI Bank do offer some Sharia law compliant products in some countries, I do not think ICICI Bank (UK) HiSAVE accounts are Sharia law compliant.

Ark_Welder

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Has it ever crossed your mind that the bank is run on Islamic principles and therefore Sharia law. So while maintaining these also has to also comply with FSA regulation and UK banking law.

It isn't. Not even in it's home market, which is India. Any bank account that offers to pay interest is not Sharia-compliant, and payment of interest is not prerequisite for UK banking and regulation.

A simpler explanation is that ICICI pays away the interest so that it can save itself a bit of money. A similar situation to the index-linked fixed-term accounts provided by BM Savings: interest cannot compound and has to be paid away to a different account.

Just_landed

ICICI
Previously on fixed term accounts they paid the interest each year compounding so you got the full interest rate at the end. This time round they played a sneaky game asking people if they wanted to take up another fixed term savings account. I like many others fell for this ploy by not reading the small print, thinking they were above this, which they are not. By doing this in my mind, it was a con trick because many people would just leave the account and not check the account until it was about to mature, by doing so they would be paying a very low interest rate to the customer on the interest paid and make themselves plenty. The effect of all this was / is that the headline interest rate looks better than it actually is. Luckily they let you transfer the interest money to your own accounts to do with what you want once a year.

calypso_rhapsody

A word of warning about ICICI's internet access - if you do not log on every so often (i think it is 6 months) you will find your access blocked. I have asked why i would want to log into a fixed term account every 6 months ... no rationale at all ... very irritating having to cope with their call centre to get reinstated!

soulsaver

calypso_rhapsody wrote: »

A word of warning about ICICI's internet access - if you do not log on every so often (i think it is 6 months) you will find your access blocked. I have asked why i would want to log into a fixed term account every 6 months ... no rationale at all ... very irritating having to cope with their call centre to get reinstated!

And for the Punjabi National Bank - except it's every 90 days and new password must not be any of the previous 4!

atypical

calypso_rhapsody wrote: »

A word of warning about ICICI's internet access - if you do not log on every so often (i think it is 6 months) you will find your access blocked.

State Bank of India also requires you to log in every 180 days or the internet access is disabled. Seems an Indian bank thing.

KingL

swaledalelass wrote: »

I have just found a page on my internet account with ICICI which states that interest will be paid annually to the linked account.

Great, I will transfer it to an interest bearing account from there.

You might find it gets transfered into your ICICI Hisave account (which is an interest-bearing instant-access savings account, separate from your fixed rate account). This is automatically set up when you open a fixed rate account (as mentioned in the TnCs above). So, the interest is paid to a linked account, just not the one you are thinking of.

Note that as well as logging in to your ICICI account every six months, you should also push/pull a quid from your linked (external) current account into/out of your ICICI Hisave instant access savings account to keep the direct debit arrangement from going dormant.

I forget the required frequency, but I do it every 6 months.