ICICI Applicants feedback required

masonic

NabCom wrote:

I noticed that my last (and first larger payment) was marked Final Payment and wondered where the dd had gone. The payment did only take 3 working days but I guess what you are saying is that my next payment will prob take 8 days again as though it was the first one?
Not planning another biggie for a while so I might try £1 or something to see if it straightens itself out.

Yes, I had a couple of quick payments made before the final payment thing started to happen. It's not even as if you can rely on it taking 8 days - if you could, at least you could time it so the money hit your linked account just in time to be collected. It's certainly not an account you want to be using actively at the moment.

DocProc

There seem to be two normal ways of tranferring money into a HiSave or INGDirect account

No 1. From the savings account.
No 2. From the current account which feeds it

I think I am right in saying that No 1. above will actually take at least three extra days.

Can someone please correct me if I am wrong about this?

There is another aspect to changing amounts of money from one savings account to another to gain a better rate:

First the money has to go from the existing savings account into the linked current account. 3 business days

Then this money has to go from the linked current account to the new savings account. 3 business days

Now of course, in doing this we must allow at least 1 business day inbetween these two transactions to avoid 'going overdrawn, etc, etc,' and another 2 non-business days on top of that have to be added for a weekend.

This all adds up to 9 total days where no interest will be earned.

Reverse this process at some time in the future (say rates drop or compare badly once again, etc) and you will then lose 18 total days interest.

Now there are 365 days in a year. So to lose the whole 18 days interest would reduce the total of actual interest earned in one year is 18/365 x 100 = 4.9%.

Or put another simple way and only talking about 9 days, it costs about 2.5% of your actual interest earned just to change to a different savings acccount.

M_Thomson

Just to ask again, Do ICICI accept bacs transfers into this account? If someone has managed to do it how long did it take?

DocProc

Copied from http://investing.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=savingAndLoansNews&storyID=2005-09-09T155013Z_01_NOA938524_RTRUKOC_0_PERSFIN-SAVE-ICICI.xml

UK's rate-chasing savers give Indian bank a headache
Fri Sep 9, 2005 4:51 PM BST
By Madeline Thomas

LONDON (Reuters) - British savers searching for a market-beating rate applied in such large numbers for an account offered by Indian bank ICICI that it was forced to stop marketing the product on a leading financial search engine.

The Internet-only 'Hisave' account generated so much demand the bank asked to have its listing removed from Moneysupermarket, a spokeswoman for the financial search engine said on Friday.

"We'd like to give customers the service they require so we will be suspending our marketing activities for 15 days -- two months maximum," ICICI's head of retail banking, Anand Kumar, said.

"After that we'll go for a big marketing campaign when all the operations are in place."

He said the saving account was still on offer.

Kumar said the bank had got a very good response when it first listed the account on Moneysupermarket so its priority was to deal with the outstanding applications before marketing again to attract new savers.

Kumar said ICICI was receiving between 200 and 300 applications a day.

ICICI is India's second largest bank. In the UK it has branches in London, Leicester and Manchester and offers corporate and personal banking products.

The bank first came to the attention of Britain's savers in July when it launched Hisave with a rate of 5.4 percent AER (annual equivalent rate). At the time, British banks and building societies were anticipating the Bank of England's August quarter-point base rate cut to 4.5 percent with cuts to their own savings rates.

ICICI paid for an initial promotion listing for two weeks on Moneysupermarket, but then asked to pull it. The Hisave account was listed again on August 15 and the bank asked for it to be removed one week later.

"They've been on the site twice and requested to come off both times. What we can presume from that is it's to do with volume," the Moneysupermarket spokeswoman said.

Martin Lewis, moneysaving expert and author of the best-selling 'Money Diet', did have the account as his top pick, saying: "It's a clean account with no tricks, with the rate guaranteed to be at least 0.25 percent above base rate until December 2007."

However he has received so many complaints from people who have tried to open accounts but have received poor service that he has updated his advice.

"I've never seen poor feedback on this scale so for the moment I'm suggesting people should avoid it," Lewis said. "It simply never expected this level of demand and cannot cope."

"It's opening accounts not running them that's causing problems. It's safe and paying a good rate but it is completely and utterly out of its depth," Lewis said.

"They will have received tens if not hundreds of thousands of account applications which is enormous for a small organisation."

masonic

DocProc wrote:

There seem to be two normal ways of tranferring money into a HiSave or INGDirect account

No 1. From the savings account.
No 2. From the current account which feeds it

I think I am right in saying that No 1. above will actually take at least three extra days.
...
Or put another simple way and only talking about 9 days, it costs about 2.5% of your actual interest earned just to change to a different savings acccount.

Yes, I made a post on this subject earlier in the thread. That's why it's not worth moving your money every time you see an account paying a tiny bit more interest. In the case of ICICI, the difference is quite a bit compared with most other accounts at the moment, so it's well worth it if you can put up with the headache of setting it up, but you will have to leave the money in there a while just to make up the interest lost in the transfer.

DocProc

Copied from http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050910/asp/frontpage/story_5221235.asp

ICICI denies report
AMIT ROY
London, Sept. 10:

ICICI Bank, one of the success stories of Indian banking in the UK, reacted angrily today to a Reuters report which suggested that it had been forced to suspend operations of a high interest account.

Rohit Bhatnagar, senior marketing manager of ICICI in Britain, told The Telegraph: “I am getting in touch with Reuters to ask them to correct their report. I don’t want a panic among our customers.”

The confusion appears to have been caused by very high demand for the 5.4 per cent interest that the bank is offering – this is higher than anything equivalent available currently in Britain.

“We are getting between 100 and 300 applications a day,” said Bhatnagar. “The product has not been suspended.”

He stressed: “The product is still available on our website, https://www.icicibank.co.uk. Just because we have stopped the marketing campaign does not mean we have suspended the product. There is enough awareness of the product.”

ICICI has very quickly become a high profile bank in Britain, at least in Indian circles. It recently added branches in Leicester, Manchester and Southall to the head office it has in Knightsbridge in London not far from Harrods.

It has teamed up with Lloyds TSB and offers customers rupee mortgages in India and even offers to find them suitable homes and commercial properties in the country.

According to today’s Reuters report, “British savers searching for a market-beating rate applied in such large numbers for an account offered by Indian bank ICICI that the bank was forced to stop marketing the product as it could not keep up with demand.”

It said: “The Internet-only 'Hisave' account generated so much interest that the bank asked to have its listing removed from Moneysupermarket, a spokeswoman for the financial search engine said on Friday.

“The bank first came to the attention of Britain's beleaguered savers in July when it launched Hisave with a rate of 5.4 percent AER (annual equivalent rate). At the time, British banks and building societies were anticipating the Bank of England's August quarter-point base rate cut to 4.5 percent with cuts to their own savings rates.

“ICICI paid for an initial promotion listing for two weeks on Moneysupermarket, but then asked to pull it. The Hisave account was listed again on August 15 and the bank asked for it to be removed one week later.”

Reuters quoted the Moneysupermarket spokeswoman as saying: “They've been on the site twice and requested to come off both times. What we can presume from that is it's to do with volume.”

There is also a quote from Anand Kumar, ICICI's head of retail banking, who told Reuters, that the bank got a very good response when it first listed the account on Moneysupermarket so its priority was to deal with the outstanding applications before marketing again to attract new ones.

Kumar also confirmed that ICICI was receiving between 200 and 300 applications a day and said: "We'd like to give customers the service they require so we will be suspending our marketing activities for 15 days -- two months maximum. After that we'll go for a big marketing campaign when all the operations are in place."

Most damaging for ICICI is that Martin Lewis, moneysaving expert and author of the best-selling 'Money Diet', did have the account as his top pick, but he had now withdrawn his endorsement..

“It's a clean account with no tricks, with the rate guaranteed to be at least 0.25 percent above base rate until December 2007," he said.

However, he had received so many complaints from people who had tried to open accounts but had received poor service that he has updated his advice.

“I've never seen poor feedback on this scale so for the moment I'm suggesting people should avoid it," Lewis told Reuters. "It simply never expected this level of demand and cannot cope.”

He added: “It's opening accounts not running them that's causing problems. It's safe and paying a good rate but it is completely and utterly out of its depth. They will have received tens if not hundreds of thousands of account applications which is enormous for a small organisation."

Bhatnagar said: “We have some differences with the statements attributed to Moneysupermarket, in the news story and we'd like to probe the matter further. We are taking up the matter with Reuters.”

It remains to be seen whether Reuters will amend its report in the light of the objections from ICICI.

Mark_Beech

Hi all :hello:

I opened an ICICI account with very little difficulty a couple of months ago. Having just retired I transferred all of my pension lump sum in - and all of my savings from ING Direct. This amounts to a few tens of thousands of pounds (..... yes I know ... but I have worked hard for it!).

How safe is ICICI (and other similar accounts) .... and what redress is there if someone 'hacks in' and half inches all my hard earned cash?

Cheers

NabCom

Mark_Beech wrote:

Hi all :hello:
How safe is ICICI (and other similar accounts) .... and what redress is there if someone 'hacks in' and half inches all my hard earned cash?

From their site
ICICI Bank UK Ltd is a member of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme established under the Financial Services and Market Act 2000. The scheme affords 100% protection to the first £2000 of a depositor's total deposits with the Bank and 90% of the next £33,000 amounting to a maximum payout of £31,700. The scheme covers deposits made with offices of the Bank within the European Economic Area and applies to deposits in all currencies.

masonic

Mark_Beech wrote:

How safe is ICICI (and other similar accounts) .... and what redress is there if someone 'hacks in' and half inches all my hard earned cash?

If someone manages to get access to your account, the best they can do is transfer the money back to your linked account. Other than that, there's not yet anything to suggest that ICICI UK are any less safe than other banks offering similar accounts.

Walletwatch

Well, greed has gotten the better of caution in my case, as I have now transferred £20000 into my HiSave after seeing the handsome interest for the last month..