To ICIC or not to ICIC?

georgy9

Hello,
I want to move all my savings away from ING and stick it into an account that has a high interest. Martin has suggested ICICI. I was all ready to register with them, buut then found this link:
http://boards.thisismoney.co.uk/tim/threadnonInd.jsp?forum=43&thread=63286&message=83451
I know the above posts are old, so maybe ICIC have got a lot better. I just wanted to know if anyone here has had a bad experience with them, because Im about to move my whole savings over to them!
Thanks

frogman_2

There are lots of people who have had a bad experience with ICICI UK (some genuinely, others just don't like the way they do things).

I guess I must be one of the lucky ones because it has been relatively pain-free for me.

If you have any concerns, then best not to open an account. But I find that they have consistently good rates and track the BoE rate rises very quickly. I typically recommend them to my friends and on the whole they have been satisfied.

ED

I, too, have been considering saving via ICICI. Could folk here with experience indicate some basic facts, including :

How many banking days to move £ from ICICI to external CHEQUE accounts?

How many days to move £ to external SAVINGS accounts?

Re deposits into ICICI (eg via BACS), do you earn interest from same-day?

Any other vital points - whether good or uncompetitive?

gt94sss2

ED wrote: »

I, too, have been considering saving via ICICI. Could folk here with experience indicate some basic facts, including :

How many banking days to move £ from ICICI to external CHEQUE accounts?

How many days to move £ to external SAVINGS accounts?

You can only make withdrawals from your ICICI account to your linked current account - it takes the same time as any normal BACS transfer..

Regards
Sunil

flac

I opened a HiSAVE account with ICICI with no difficulty. But I was surprised to discover that the password you are required to set up on the account can only consist of numbers (0-9) and can only be six digits in length. In my view this is not secure for an internet account - especially as the account number is sent to you by unencrypted email and could be intercepted and read enroute. It is generally considered good practice to use a mixture of numbers and letters in a password to make it more difficult to guess, and a password of only six digits is very short. For this reason I myself would not be prepared to deposit money with ICICI, and I closed the account immediately.

Just my 2 pence

masonic

Using a 'strong' password is important in situations where someone could keep guessing until they found it in a brute-force manner, but in this case, the password cannot be subject to a brute-force attack as you only have a handful of login attempts before the account gets locked. Imagine the likelihood of guessing a random number between 1 and 1000 in, say, 4 attempts. Pretty unlikely, eh. There are 1000000 possible combinations of 6 digits.

Now ICICI's security leaves a lot to be desired, but it's the lack of anti-phishing/trojan measures that make it vulnerable. Even with a six digit numeric password, it's far far easier to intercept it than guess it.

flac

I am sure you are right, and no doubt many people would be very happy with the odds you quote. For myself I prefer to bank with organisations that allow me to establish 'strong' passwords - and (if necessary) I will forgo one or two percentage points on the interest rate to have that peace of mind.

Norman-B

I applied weeks ago for a Hisave acc' and have had nothing but bother! In the end, I gave them 7 days to open the acc or forget it. Not had a word from them since.

4 days ago, I applied for an A & L Direct save account paying 6.10% and I had confirmation of acceptance today.

Goodbye ICICI

zebidee1

No problems here. Account just opened, emailed every step of the way to let me know what stage the process was at and everything was fast and easy.

kingmonkey

Had to ring up twice to get password otherwise Im happy.

SkipClick

Never invest your money into a foreign banks stick to the English more safer.