ICICI Bank Stock

ICICI Bank (ICICI Bank) Limited operates as a diversified financial services group.

The company is offering a wide range of banking and financial services to corporate and retail customers through a variety of delivery channels. Apart from banking products and services, the company offers life and general insurance, asset management, securities broking, and private equity products and services through the company’s specialized subsidiaries and affiliates.

The company’s primary business consists of commercial banking operations for retail and corporate customers. The company’s commercial banking operations for retail customers consist of retail lending, deposit taking, distribution of insurance and investment products and other fee-based products and services. The company provides a range of commercial banking products and services, including loan products, fee and commission-based products and services, deposit products and foreign exchange and derivatives products to large corporations, middle market companies and small and medium enterprises. The company also offers agricultural and rural banking products. The company earns interest and fee income from the company’s commercial banking operations. The company delivers its products and services through a variety of channels, including bank branches, ATMs, call centers, internet and mobile phones. The company has a network of branches and ATMs and cash recycler machines in India.

The company’s international franchise focuses on four strategic pillars, namely the non-resident Indian ecosystem comprising deposits, remittances, investments and asset products; multinational corporation ecosystem comprising foreign multinational companies investing in India, Indian companies present in overseas markets, and back-offices of multinational companies located in India; trade ecosystem, comprising primarily India-linked trade transactions; and funds ecosystem, to capture foreign investment flows into India. As of March 31, 2023, the company had banking subsidiaries in the United Kingdom and Canada, branches in China, Singapore, Dubai International Finance Centre, Hong Kong, the United States (New York), Bahrain, Offshore Banking Unit located in the Santacruz Electronic Exports Promotion Zone, Mumbai and IFSC Banking Unit, Gandhinagar, Gujarat. At March 31, 2023, the company had representative offices in the United Arab Emirates (Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah), Bangladesh, Nepal, Malaysia, United States (Texas and California), Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The company’s subsidiary in the United Kingdom has a branch in Germany.

The company’s treasury operations include the maintenance and management of regulatory reserves, proprietary trading in equity and fixed income and a range of foreign exchange and derivatives products and services for corporate customers, such as forward contracts and interest rate and currency swaps.

The company is also engaged in insurance, asset management, securities broking business and private equity fund management through specialized subsidiaries. The company’s subsidiaries, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company and ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company, provide a wide range of life insurance and asset management products respectively.

The company’s affiliate, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Limited provides a wide range of general insurance products. The bank’s holding in ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Limited was 48.0% at March 31, 2023.

The company’s subsidiary, ICICI Securities Limited, is engaged in equities underwriting, securities broking and distribution of financial products. The company’s subsidiary ICICI Securities Primary Dealership Limited is engaged in underwriting and primary dealership of government securities. The company’s private equity fund management subsidiary ICICI Venture, manages funds that make private equity investments.

Strategy

In the year ended March 31, 2023 (fiscal 2023), the company maintained its strategic focus on profitable growth in business within the guardrails of risk and compliance.

The key elements of the company’s strategy are to leverage its branch network, digital channels, partnerships and presence across various ecosystems to expand the company’s customer base; focus on ecosystems; focus on micro markets; increase collaboration to provide solutions that meet the complete banking requirements of customers; leverage technology and digital across businesses; and recognize the importance of establishing an effective framework and supporting processes so that all employees seek to exhibit desired behaviours aligned to the Risk and Compliance Culture Policy.

The company’s strategy emphasizes decongestion of internal process to make customer onboarding and service delivery frictionless, thereby improving the customer experience.

Products and Services

Commercial Banking for Retail Customers

The company’s commercial banking operations for retail customers consist of retail lending and deposits, and fee based products and services like credit, debit and prepaid cards, depositary share accounts and distribution of third party investment and insurance products.

Retail Lending Activities

The company’s retail lending activities include home loans, automobile loans, commercial business loans, personal loans, credit cards, consumer durable goods financing, loans against time deposits and loans against securities. The company also funds dealers who sell automobiles and commercial vehicles. Up to 2020, the company reported business banking and various products of the company’s rural portfolio, such as loans against jewellery, kisan credit card as a part of the company’s retail lending activities. From 2022, the company started presenting business banking and products of rural portfolio separately.

The company’s suite of products and services for retail customers includes savings, investment, credit and protection products, along with convenient payment and transaction banking services. The company’s retail portfolio consists largely of secured lending, with growth based on proprietary data and analytics in addition to credit bureau checks. The company’s deposit franchise enables the company to offer competitive pricing. The company also leverages its existing customer database for sale of key retail asset products through cross-sell and up-sell. The company’s underwriting process involves a combination of key variables to assess the cash flow and repayment ability of the customer like income, leverage, customer profile, affluence markers, credit bureau data and demographics. The company utilizes multiple data points, including liability and asset relationships, transaction behavior and bureau behavior along with proprietary machine learning and statistical models for making credit decisions.

Home Loans

The company’s home loan portfolio includes loans for purchase and construction of homes and by mortgaging residential or commercial properties. The company also offers instant top-up on home loans to existing home loan customers. The company’s policies for home loans are based on certain stipulated ratios such as the loan-to-value ratio and the ratio of fixed debt obligations to a borrower’s income. The initial repayment term of home loans is 15 to 20 years with payments in the form of equal monthly installments. The credit process includes cashflow assessment of the borrower, as well as evaluating the property being mortgaged against the legal and technical standards defined at the bank.

The company follows robust credit appraisal processes for loan-against-property. The company also provides loans to customers belonging to economically weaker sections and customers buying homes in the low-cost affordable housing segment.

The company’s home loans primarily have floating interest rates linked to the repo rate of the Reserve Bank of India.

The company offers home loan products primarily in India through ICICI Bank and the company’s wholly owned subsidiary, ICICI Home Finance Company Limited. The loan portfolio of the company’s housing finance subsidiary includes home loans, loans-against-property and loans to developers among others.

The company’s banking subsidiary in Canada offers residential mortgages in the local market.

Automobile Loans

The company finances the purchase of new and used automobiles. Automobile loans are fixed rate products repayable in equal monthly installments. The interest rate is based on factors, such as bureau score, customer relationship, car segment and tenure of loan, among others, for new automobiles and asset age car segment coupled with product variant like top-up or refinance, for used automobiles.

Commercial Business Loans

The company finances the purchase of commercial vehicles and equipment. Commercial business loans are fixed rate products repayable in equal monthly installments. The company’s commercial business customers include individuals to large fleet operators, contractors, hirers, and captive customers.

Personal Loans and Credit Cards

The company also offers unsecured products such as personal loans and credit cards to the company’s customers. Personal loans and credit card receivables have fixed interest rates. The company offers a range of instant personal loans and credit cards that are accessible entirely through the company’s digital channels.

Retail Deposits

The company’s retail deposit products include time deposits and savings account deposits. The company offers these products with special features targeted at specific customer segments, such as high net worth individuals, defense personnel, trusts and business owners. The company also offers real-time account opening and activation to savings account customers, through enhanced system-driven validations. The company also offers corporate salary account products and current account (i.e., checking accounts for businesses) products to the company’s small enterprise customers, who maintain balances with the company.

Fee-Based Products and Services

Through the company’s distribution network, the company offers various products, including Government of India savings bonds, sovereign gold bonds, insurance policies, bullion and public offerings of equity shares and debt securities by Indian companies. The company offers several card-based products such as credit cards, debit cards, prepaid cards, travel cards and commercial cards. The company also offers a variety of mutual fund products. The company levies services charges on deposit accounts. The company also offers foreign exchange products to retail customers, including sale of currency notes, traveler’s checks and travel cards. The company also facilitates retail inward remittances from foreign geographies.

As a depositary participant of the National Securities Depository Limited and Central Depository Services (India) Limited, the company offers depositary share accounts to settle securities transactions in a dematerialized mode. Further, the company is one of the banks designated by the Reserve Bank of India for issuing approvals to non-resident Indians and overseas corporate bodies to trade in shares and convertible debentures on the Indian stock exchanges and operating their banking and custody accounts.

Retail Lending for Rural Customers

The bank’s rural banking operations aim to meet the financial requirements of customers in rural and semi-urban locations. The company’s products in this segment include working capital loans for growing crops, financing of post-harvest activities, loans against gold jewellery along with personal loans, financing against warehouse receipts, farm equipment loans and affordable housing finance and auto and two-wheeler loans. The company also provides consumption loans for low-income customers. The company offers financial solutions to micro-finance institutions, self-help groups, co-operatives constituted by farmers, corporations and medium enterprises engaged in agriculture-linked businesses.

The company’s rural banking operations primarily focus on four main ecosystems identified in the rural market, which include farmers, dealers, self-employed persons and micro-entrepreneurs.

The farmer ecosystem includes participants, such as farmers, seed producers, agri-input dealers, warehouses, agri-equipment dealers, commodity traders and agri processors. Products offered include working capital loans through the kisan credit card and gold loan products, and term loans for farm equipment, dairy livestock purchase and farm development.

The dealer ecosystem comprises dealers/distributors of farm equipment, white goods, and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Similarly, the self-employed ecosystem comprises rural entrepreneurs who are engaged into trading and manufacturing activities based out of commercial and industrial areas in the rural market dealing with both agriculture and non-agriculture related products. The micro-lending space includes women from the lower-income strata of the population, non-government organizations and other institutions working at the grass-root level in the rural economy.

The company has scaled-up funding of electronic negotiable warehousing receipts, which provides an opportunity for farmers to access credit quickly and with ease. Farmers can use electronic negotiable warehousing receipts to get loans against underlying commodities. This protects the farmers from volatility and gives opportunities to avail better prices for their produce. Apart from meeting the financial requirements for business purposes, the company also offers products to meet the personal requirements of customers in the rural ecosystem.

The company’s reach in rural areas comprises a network of branches, ATMs and field staff, and business correspondents providing last-mile access in remote areas. As of March 31, 2023, the company had a network of branches, of which 51.4% were in rural and semi-urban areas with branches in villages that were previously unbanked. As of March 31, 2023, the company had ATMs and cash recycler machines in rural areas.

Commercial Banking for Small and Medium Enterprises and Business Banking

The company’s business banking and small and medium enterprises customers include proprietorship firms, partnership firms and public/private limited companies. The company offers a wide spectrum of banking products and solutions to address their evolving business needs. This involves customized offerings, faster turnaround time, transaction convenience, timely access to capital and cross-border trade and foreign exchange. The company’s focus in this segment is on using digital channels and ensuring granularity, obtaining adequate collateral and robust monitoring. More than 90% of the company’s business banking portfolio has collateral covering more than 100% of the outstanding value of the loan. The loans are generally secured by collateral in the form of property apart from a charge on current assets. The company’s small and medium enterprise portfolio consists of enterprises with a turnover of up to Rs. 2.5 billion. The company offers a wide spectrum of banking products and solutions to small and medium enterprises to address their evolving business needs. This involves customized offerings, faster turnaround time, transaction convenience, timely access to capital and cross-border trade and foreign exchange. The company offers digital solutions for on-boarding, payments and collections, lending and cross-border transactions. The company focuses on providing parameterized and programme-based lending for small and medium enterprises, which is granular, adequately-collateralized and regularly monitored. The loans are generally secured by collateral in the form of property apart from a charge on current assets.

The company is focused on growing this portfolio by leveraging its distribution network and through various digital channels and platforms, tapping corporate ecosystems and ongoing efforts towards process decongestion.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has provided financial assistance to clients based on various Government of India schemes, which includes providing moratorium on loan repayment and emergency credit lines to eligible small and medium enterprise customers.

Commercial Banking for Corporate Customers

The company’s product suite for corporate customers includes working capital and term loan products and transaction banking services, fee and commission-based products and services, deposits and foreign exchange and derivatives products across trade, treasury, bonds, commercial papers, channel financing, supply chain solutions, and various other activities. The company’s approach has been to deepen the company’s partnership and support to clients through their life cycle. The company’s corporate customer base includes top business houses, large and medium private and public sector companies, financial institutions, banks, non-bank finance companies, private equity funds and financial sponsors. The company has established relationships with multinational companies operating in India, and financial sponsors, including private equity funds and their investee companies. The company offers transaction banking services to corporates to meet the day-to-day needs for smooth functioning of their businesses. The transaction banking services offered include account related services, payment and collection services, domestic and cross border trade finance, working capital finance and supply chain finance. The company offers integrated cash management and trade finance solutions to the company’s customers. The company’s transaction banking solutions are delivered to the company’s customers through physical and digital channels and a team of account managers.

Corporate Loan Portfolio

The company’s corporate loan portfolio consists of term loan products and working capital financing in the form of cash credit facilities, overdraft, demand loans and non-fund based facilities, including bill discounting, letters of credit and guarantees.

The company also provides financing by way of investment in marketable instruments such as fixed rate and floating rate debentures. The company generally has a security interest on the fixed assets of the borrower although some of the company’s financing is also extended on an unsecured basis.

Fee and Commission-Based Activities

The company generates fee income through its lending, transaction banking, syndication and foreign exchange related solutions provided to the company’s corporate customers. The company also offers its corporate customers a wide variety of fee and commission-based products and services, including documentary credits, standby letters of credit (called guarantees in India), collection and payment of export/import bills and cash management services, including collection, payment and remittance services.

Further, the company is one of the banks designated by the Reserve Bank of India for issuing approvals to non-resident Indians and overseas corporate bodies to trade in shares and convertible debentures on the Indian stock exchanges and operating their banking and custody accounts. The company also offers services, such as escrow, trust and retention account facilities, online payment facilities, custodial services and tax filing and collection services on behalf of the Government of India and the governments of Indian states.

Corporate Deposits

The company offers a variety of deposit products to the company’s corporate customers including current accounts, time deposits and certificates of deposits.

Foreign Exchange and Derivatives

The company provides customer specific products and services, which cater to risk hedging needs of corporations at domestic and international locations, arising out of currency and interest rate fluctuations.

The products and services include:

Foreign Exchange Products

Products include cash, tom, spot and forwards transactions. The company offers customized hedging and trading solutions to clients, on the basis of their business needs. These products are offered in India and across the company’s international locations.

Derivatives

The company offers derivative products, including interest rate swaps, currency swaps and options in all major currencies.

Commercial Banking for Government and Institutions

The company provides a range of banking services, including customized products and services for enhancing e-governance and financial management to government departments and bodies across various levels, such as central, state, district and local bodies which include municipalities and gram panchayats. The company assists the government for collection of central taxes, state taxes and goods and services tax payments through authorized branches and digital channels. The company’s integrated banking platforms provide simple online tax payment options to customers. Statutory payments like Employees’ Provident Fund Organization and Employees’ State Insurance Corporation dues can be done online through the company’s platforms. These efforts also result in deposit balances for the bank.

The company has on-boarded a number of central and state government departments to ensure quick disbursement of funds and benefits to beneficiaries and implementing agencies through the Public Financial Management System of the Government of India. The company is also assisting state level nodal agencies and last mile implementing agencies for adopting efficient release of Government of India scheme funds.

The company also provides financial services to other institutions, including educational institutions, hospitals and cooperative societies, among others and offer a range of technology driven collections and payment solutions.

Commercial Banking for International Customers

The company’s international franchise focuses on four strategic pillars, namely the non-resident Indian ecosystem comprising deposits, remittances, investments and asset products; multinational corporation ecosystem comprising foreign multinational companies investing in India, Indian companies present in overseas markets, and back-offices of multinational companies located in India; trade ecosystem, comprising primarily India-linked trade transactions; and funds ecosystem, to capture foreign investment flows into India. During fiscal 2023, the company continued to progress in the company’s strategic objective of reducing the non-India linked exposures in a planned manner. Further, the company’s overseas banking subsidiaries continue to serve local markets selectively with a focus on risk mitigation and granularity of business.

Many of the products that the company offers through its overseas branches and subsidiaries, as well as to international customers from the company’s domestic network, such as debt financing, trade finance and letters of credit, are similar to the products offered to the company’s customers in India.

The company’s subsidiaries in the United Kingdom and Canada are full service banks offering retail, business banking, corporate banking and treasury services. These subsidiaries provide services to its customers through robust digital channels through internet and mobile banking. The company’s subsidiary in the United Kingdom is primarily focused on India linked business and towards meeting the banking needs of the Indian community in the United Kingdom and Germany. The core services include meeting local banking requirements, remittance services to India, and facilitating banking requirements in India. The company’s subsidiary in Canada originates residential mortgages, primarily insured and qualifying for insurance by either the Canadian federal government agency or insurance companies back-stopped by the Canadian federal government, and offers loans to both Canadian and the U.S. corporations, as well as Indian corporations seeking to develop their business overseas.

Branch and ATM Network and Call Centers

The company delivers its products and services through a variety of channels, ranging from traditional bank branches to ATMs, cash recycler machines and call centers. In addition, the company’s digital channels and platforms have become increasingly important to the company’s customers. At March 31, 2023, the company had a network of branches across several Indian states. The branch network serves as an integrated channel for deposit mobilization and selected retail asset origination. The company’s focus is to create fully digital branches and touch points for customer experience in order to maximize customer engagement time for solutions. Branches with higher number of customer visits, multi-service kiosks are deployed with touch-screen self-service devices, which allow customers to use banking services like deposit cheque, get quick account credit, update passbook, transfer funds instantly to ICICI and other bank customers and more than 50 fully digital other ‘Do-it-yourself’ services, which help reduce customer wait times.

At March 31, 2023, the company had ATMs and cash recycler machines across India. The company’s ATMs have additional value added services, such as instant fund transfer, cardless cash withdrawal and update of mobile numbers for ICICI Bank customers.

The company’s phone banking operations across locations at Thane, Hyderabad, Guwahati, Indore, Bhubaneshwar and Chennai are operational around the clock and are equipped with interactive voice response systems, voice bot solution, voice biometric authentications, automatic call distribution, telephony integration and voice recorders. The company seeks to use the latest technology to provide an integrated view of customer information to the agents to get a complete overview of the customer’s relationship with the company. The company has a virtual relationship management platform, which provides superior and seamless connect that caters to the transaction and product needs of customers through human interface powered by artificial intelligence, which builds robust customer relationships. The company has implemented a customer relationship management solution for the automation of customer service requests in all key banking products. The solution helps in tracking and timely resolution of various customer queries and issues. The solution has been deployed at the phone banking, as well as at a large number of branches.

Investment Banking

The company’s investment banking operations principally consist of ICICI Bank’s treasury operations and the operations of ICICI Securities Primary Dealership Limited and of ICICI Securities Limited.

Treasury

Through the company’s treasury operations, the company seeks to manage its balance sheet, including the maintenance of required regulatory reserves, and to optimize profits from the company’s trading portfolio by taking advantage of market opportunities. The company’s domestic trading and securities portfolio includes the company’s regulatory reserve portfolio, as there is no restriction on active management of the company’s regulatory reserve portfolio. The company’s treasury operations include a range of products and services for corporate and small enterprise customers, such as forward contracts and interest rate and currency swaps, and foreign exchange products and services.

ICICI Bank engages in investments and foreign exchange operations from Mumbai and overseas branches. As a part of the company’s treasury activities, the company also maintains proprietary trading portfolios in domestic debt and equity securities and in foreign currency assets. The company’s treasury manages its foreign currency exposures and the foreign exchange and risk hedging derivative products offered to the company’s customers and engages in market making and proprietary trading in currency and interest rate market.

In general, the company pursues a strategy of active management of the company’s equity portfolio to maximize the company’s return on investment.

The company deals in several major foreign currencies and take deposits from non-resident Indians in major foreign currencies. The company also manages onshore accounts in foreign currencies. The foreign exchange treasury manages the company’s portfolio through money market and foreign exchange instruments to optimize yield and liquidity.

The company provides a variety of risk management solutions to the company’s clients, including foreign currency forward contracts, currency and interest rate swaps and options. The company monitors and controls the market risk and credit risk on the company’s foreign exchange portfolio through counterparty limits, position limits, stop-loss limits and limits on the loss of the entire foreign exchange trading operations and exception reporting.

Securities Broking and Investment Banking

ICICI Securities Limited is a financial services company operating across capital market segments, including retail and institutional equity, financial product distribution, private wealth management and investment banking. As at March 31, 2023, ICICI Securities Limited served 9 million customers. ICICI Securities Limited has an online securities broking platform. ICICI Securities Limited assists its customers like retail investors, corporates, financial institutions, high net worth individuals and ultra-high networth individuals in meeting their financial goals by providing them with research, advisory and execution services. ICICI Securities Limited has a subsidiary in the United States, ICICI Securities Holdings Inc., which in turn has a subsidiary in the United States, ICICI Securities Inc., which is registered as a broker-dealer with the Securities and Exchange Commission and is a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in the United States. ICICI Securities Inc. also has a branch office in Singapore that is registered with the Monetary Authority of Singapore, where it holds a capital markets services license for dealing in capital market products in Singapore.

I-Process Services

I-Process Services (India) Private Limited (‘iProcess’) is an associate company of ICICI Bank. iProcess has a service provider agreement only with the bank to provide business auxiliary services across sales, marketing, data entry, operations and collection functions. At March 31, 2023, the bank held 19.0% of the shareholding of iProcess.

Primary Dealership

ICICI Securities Primary Dealership is engaged in the primary dealership of Indian government securities. It also deals in other fixed income securities and interest rate derivatives. In addition to this, it undertakes money market operations, underwriting, portfolio management services and placement of debt.

Private Equity

The company’s subsidiary ICICI Venture is a diversified specialist alternative asset manager with a presence across private equity, real estate, infrastructure and special situations.

Asset Management

The company provides asset management services through the company’s subsidiary, ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company. ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company is a joint venture with Prudential PLC of the United Kingdom. The company has 51.0% interest in the entity and Prudential PLC owns 49.0%. ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company also provides portfolio management services and advisory services to clients.

Insurance

The company provides a wide range of insurance products and services through the company’s subsidiary ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited and the company’s affiliate ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Limited. ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited is a joint venture with Prudential Corporation Holding Limited. Both ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited and ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Limited are listed on relevant Indian stock exchanges.

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited has a wholly owned subsidiary, ICICI Prudential Pension Funds Management Company Limited, which distributes products under the National Pension System and is a registered pension fund manager.

The company’s share ownership in ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited was 51.27% at March 31, 2023.

The company has entered into an agreement with the company’s insurance subsidiaries, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited and ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Limited, and operate as a corporate agent for these companies and distribute general insurance and selective life insurance products through the company’s branches, phone banking and digital channels and earn commissions and fees from these subsidiaries.

Loan Portfolio

Collateral —Completion, Perfection and Enforcement

The company’s loan portfolio largely consists of corporate finance and working capital loans to corporate borrowers, loans to retail customers, including home loans, automobile loans, commercial business loans, personal loans and credit card receivables and agricultural financing. The company’s unsecured loans primarily include personal loans, credit card receivables and loans to higher-rated corporate borrowers. For loans which are secured, the company generally stipulates that the loans should be collateralized at the time of loan origination.

Secured Consumer Loan Portfolio

Secured consumer loans for the purchase of assets, such as mortgage loans and automobile loans are secured by the assets being financed (predominantly property and vehicles).

Commercial Loans

The bank generally requires collateral at origination for commercial loans. The company may also extend unsecured facilities in certain circumstances. Such circumstances may include working capital limits outside consortium, short term requirements of the borrower, regulatory norms/restrictions on taking security and facilities where adequate structural comforts are available to mitigate the envisaged credit risks and retail loans, such as credit cards and personal loans. The company also provides unsecured loans to higher rated, well-established corporates.

Technology

Digital Platforms and Journeys for Retail Customers

The company uses artificial intelligence and machine learning based engines to develop customer profiles and curate personalized offerings for them. The company offers various solutions, such as account opening, payment solutions, home loans, automobile loans, personal loans, credit cards, term life insurance, health insurance and investment solutions to the company’s customers suiting their life-stage needs through the company’s digital channels –via the company’s retail internet banking platform and the company’s mobile banking application, iMobile Pay. The company’s retail internet banking platform offers users a native dashboard, semantic and personalized search options and an interface that can be personalized by them to suit their requirements and preferences. The open architecture based feature of iMobile Pay allows users to make payments using unified payments interface even if they do not have an account with the company.

The company uses video interaction for carrying out Know Your Customer while onboarding new customers. The company offers instant home loan approvals, car loan disbursements, personal loan disbursements and credit cards that are accessible entirely through the company’s retail internet banking platform and iMobile Pay. The processing of loans is digitized, enabling instant disbursement to pre-approved customers. The company also offers an instant digital credit facility, PayLater, on iMobile Pay which enables pre-approved customers to access instant credit for buying small ticket items through unified payments interface. iLens is an integrated, digital lending solution for mortgages which covers all facets of loan lifecycle starting from sales till disbursement, including property appraisal. It is a single interface for employees, third party agencies and distribution channels with the objective of providing smooth transaction experience and enhanced operational efficiency. iLens has an inbuilt customer interface ‘TrackMyLoan’ through which the customers can track real time status of their loan application, submit documents, respond to queries and access various communications and documents like an approval letter or fees acknowledgment. Mortgage is the first retail product which went live on iLens platform and other retail products are in the process of being on-boarded. This is expected to further enable the bank to provide enhanced customer experience and increase its ability to capture the entire customer 360° ecosystem in a frictionless and digital way, thereby creating value for customer and the bank.

Digital Payments and Partnerships

The company has continued to strengthen the company’s position in the digital payments ecosystem by designing seamless journeys for customers, facilitating higher volumes and prompting recurrent transactions. The company’s strategy is to participate in unified payments interface, which is a funds transfer system that enables real-time movement of funds, both directly through the company’s own platforms, and partner with third party players in the peer-to-peer and peer-to-merchant space.

FASTag is an electronic toll collection system in India operated by the National Highways Authority of India through prepaid radio frequency identification tags. The company is one of the leading banks in electronic toll collection on highways through FASTag. The company has not only pioneered the usage of FASTag for toll payments at various national and state highway but also expanded the usage of FASTag for parking payments at airports, malls, hospitals and tech parks across the country.

The company has partnerships, such as with Amazon Pay, a leading global ecommerce company, and MakeMyTrip, a leading Indian online travel portal, Emirates Skywards and others to offer co-branded credit cards. The company offers these credit cards to the company’s customers as well as non-ICICI Bank account holders. Amazon Pay credit cards continued to see healthy traction with over 4.0 million Amazon Pay credit cards were issued until March 31, 2023. The company aims to provide comprehensive solutions to the new-to-bank customers that have been acquired through Amazon Pay credit cards.

Digital Platforms and Journeys for Business Banking Customers, Small and Medium Enterprise Customers, Merchant Ecosystem and Ecommerce Ecosystem

The company’s digital platform, InstaBIZ, is a one stop solution for all banking needs catering to small and medium enterprises, individuals, proprietors and merchants. The company has seen an increase in the engagement level of customers on the InstaBIZ app. In line with evolving trends of shift towards open architecture, the InstaBIZ app is interoperable and is available to both ICICI Bank customers and non-ICICI Bank customers for availing the multiple product offerings.

The company’s Trade Online platform allows customers to perform most of their trade finance and foreign exchange transactions, such as regularization of bill of entry and export bills, accessing letters of credit and fixed deposit backed bank guarantees, accessing export credit, and facilitating import and export bill collections digitally. The platform also enables clients to manage regulatory compliances. With a view to meet the working capital requirements of exporters, the company has launched Insta Export Packing Credit (Insta EPC), a digital solution, which offers instant export finance to customers. The process automates the entire scrutiny cycle through integrations with various internal and external applications.

During fiscal 2023, the company launched APIs for trade finance, a solution that establishes a direct communication channel by linking the customer’s enterprise resource planning (‘ERP’) and the bank’s internal systems in a secure and seamless manner. Trade APIs enable end-to-end encryption of data and real-time updates. It helps in streamlining the flow of information from the customers’ ERP to the bank’s systems. Electronic Bank Guarantee (‘eBG’) is an Application Programming Interface (‘API’) based digital workflow, which eliminates physical issuance, stamping, authentication and paper intensive record maintenance of bank guarantees.

The company’s strategy in the merchant ecosystem space involves onboarding merchants through acquiring platforms or by providing them payment gateways and then cross-selling other financial products and services seamlessly. The company’s ‘Merchant STACK’ offers an array of banking and value-added services to retailers, online businesses and large e-commerce firms. The main pillars of the Merchant STACK include a zero-balance Super Merchant Current Account which offers various benefits, such as digital account opening and instant overdraft facilities based on point-of-sale transactions.

Digital Platforms and Solutions for Corporate and Institutional Customers and Their Ecosystems

‘ICICI STACK for Corporates’ offering comprehensive solutions to corporates and their ecosystem like channel partners, dealers, vendors, employees and other stakeholders, thus bringing the full range of banking services to the customer. ICICI STACK for Corporates offers customized services to companies in over 20 key industries and their entire ecosystem. The four main pillars of ‘ICICI STACK for Corporates’ are digital banking solutions for corporates; digital supply chain management solutions; digital banking services for employees; and curated services for senior client personnel. Platforms offered to corporate customers as a part of ICICI STACK for Corporates include Corporate Internet Banking, Trade Online and FX Online, and other platforms. Trade Emerge, an online platform for cross-border trade, is a one stop solution for all the trade related needs of exporters and importers. It eliminates the need for companies to coordinate with multiple touchpoints. Trade Emerge has also been integrated with Corporate Internet Banking and InstaBIZ and Trade Online to ensure that all banking and other needs of exporters and importers are fulfilled inside the ICICI ecosystem. Since the launch of Trade Emerge in fiscal 2022, the platform has witnessed an encouraging response from both ICICI and non-ICICI customers. During fiscal year 2023, the company increased the scope of services being offered on Trade Emerge platform by partnering with service providers who are industry leaders. These additional services include warehousing, inland logistics, logistics documentation and regulatory information. The company has also enabled instant and hassle free current account opening on Trade Emerge and have set up a dedicated phone banking team, which will help the company in catering to customer needs more quickly.

The company’s solutions to meet the needs of customers and their ecosystems are supported by robust online channels and Application Programme Interfaces that aim to impart convenience and efficiency to the company’s clients.

Supply chain financing is an integral part and a focus area towards deepening the company’s coverage of the corporate ecosystem. The company’s wide range of supply chain and structured trade products offers a one stop solution to corporate clients and their supply chain partners helping in optimizing their working capital needs and increasing efficiencies in their ecosystem. These supply chain solutions are offered digitally through the company’s platforms namely OneSCF, FSCM, CorpConnect and DigitalLite, wherein corporates can seamlessly manage their supply chain requirements of payments, collection, data reconciliation and customized dashboards in a convenient and paperless environment thereby bringing in efficiencies in the corporates supply chain management. The company’s digital approving engine assess the credit eligibility of the corporate’s dealers and vendors for credit through business rule engine, Goods and Services Tax returns, intelligent algorithm with automated bureau checks, dedupe checks.

Transforming into BankTech

In fiscal 2023, the company continued to progress on the company’s journey from Bank to BankTech and invested in key technology solutions, which provide the company competitive edge across business and operational capabilities. From a business perspective, the priorities driving the company’s technology focus include improving customers’ digital experiences across various touch points and enabling sales and cross-selling of products and services with data serving as the foundation for informed decision-making leading to the creation of comprehensive value propositions for customers. The company constantly upgrading and strengthening the technology infrastructure with a goal to build a secure, stable and resilient technology infrastructure and improving operational efficiency. Business process optimisation through adoption of intelligent automation platforms, including robotic processes have enabled efficiency across business and operational functions. These have brought about faster turnaround time besides enabling increased capacity for handling transaction volumes and customer requirements. As part of the company’s technology strategy, the company focuses on creating an enterprise architecture framework across digital platforms, data and analytics, micro services-based architecture, cloud computing, cognitive intelligence and other emerging technologies.

The company has a dedicated data science and analytics team that works across business areas on projects relating to business analytics, decision strategies, forecasting models, machine learning, rule engines and performance monitoring. The company maintains a comprehensive enterprise wide data warehouse and employ statistical and modelling tools for leading-edge analytics.

Data Center and Disaster Recovery System

The company has a data center at Hyderabad, which is designed to optimize energy efficiency and accommodate high server densities. The company also has a disaster recovery data center at Jaipur. The company is also creating additional capacity through new data centers in Mumbai. The company has developed business continuity plans, which would help facilitate continuity of critical businesses in the event of a disaster. These plans are tested periodically and have been prepared in line with the guidelines issued by the Reserve Bank of India and have been approved by the company’s Board of Directors. The bank has also equipped itself with state-of-the-art infrastructure management systems, which leverage Internet of Things based technology at its data center for optimal utilization of energy.

History

ICICI Bank Limited was founded in 1955. The company was incorporated in 1994 under the laws of India as a limited liability corporation.