A recent press report said that ICICI Bank has lowered the pace of deposit growth from foreign markets. It has decided to focus on growth of deposits from local grounds.
Ms. Chanda Kochhar CEO and MD of the bank said that the bank is hardly growing retail deposits in these markets. She said that the bank was getting a lot of deposits but it is not taking that many because the funds cannot be used to lend to Indian companies. She also said that the growth of the bank’s international operations is now coming from the wholesale side.
The bank had previously set up subsidiaries in foreign countries like United Kingdom and Canada so as to raise deposits from there and aid Indian companies with it. Ms. Kochhar said that the Global regulators had accepted the approach, and that’s how the business was set up but after 2008, due to the global uncertainty, regulators changed their approach. She said that their worry was not particularly on Indian exposure but also about co-mingling the risks of two countries.
She added saying that due to the global economic meltdown, exposure to foreign risks has become a threat for all regulators and ICICI Bank stands no different in that. The bank has recently announced fixed interest rate product for home loans. The loan product Is expected to protect customers from frequent changes in home loan interest rates and protect them from any rise in interest rates over the next one year or two years depending on the product availed by the customer.