Friday At ICICI

Tried logging onto the ICICI.com site but it rejected my log on number/and or password. Contacted ICICI by phone and advised that the UK site is down for technical reasons and that is why my log on details don't work! Also they won't work if you have accessed their site via Google - you need to do it directly through your browser! Anyone know why? Advised to try again tomorrow .....getting a bad feeling about this one after being bitten twice by Iceland banks this week - anyone else out there feel the same?

icici have 8 global websites for markets in different countries around the world. only the uk site is down.
hopefully that implies a web site fault, not a problem with the bank itself.

This is scaremongering as you can also call them by phone on a freefone number, which they answered recently very quickly.

The web site is quite often a bit slow (I've used it for more than 5 years), but this in itself will cause some to panic because of global fears.

Its BACK UP guys.

Well done ICICI.

Here is a useful bit of info to look out for, sort of thing Martin Lewis (huh!) and Fool should high light 'cos it can be easily over looked:
If you have a stocks & shares isa and you were prudent or lucky enough to have sold all or some of yr equities and the proceeds (cash) is held in reserve (still in the Isa)by your provider then it will be ring fenced in YOUR NAME in whichever bank the provider uses - Cofunds/Chartwell for example use RBS. This WILL count towards your FSCS limit, so if you've got other funds with that bank you could be exposed.

A Indian bank went burst about 30 years ago, and then there was no help at all for depositors, many small business suffered twice,lost their money in current account but still had to pay off business loans to liquidators! Then name was similar to Icici as well.

"Cecily, you will read your political economy in my absence. The chapter on the fall of the rupee you may omit. It is somewhat too sensational..."

-- Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde

Having rang ICICI two days running, both yesterday and the day before, I can confirm that the site was running extremely slowly, and I was told by two seperate banking officers that technicians were working to rectify the fault. I would appear that they had no luck at doing this with it still running, and were forced to shut it down to find the problem.
There is absolutely no panic, as can recall previous iccindence of this slow running fault.
I find ICICI an excellent bank, and am fully confident in the security of my savings.
Thank you India for a great savings institution
I have a joint account with them, with near the guaranteed maximum, and i sleep soundly at night.

Mr Woodward

I have arranged to transfer the money from my Hisave account because I need it soon (next few months) for a new kitchen. I have left my 2 fixed term accounts, figuring that if the bank does go bust I will get the money back from the FSA. I have concerns though that the only record I have of my accounts is my accout numbers and a print-out from the screen last night.

I attempted to withdraw some of my savings from ICICI on Monday evening. Nothing had arrived in my linked account yesterday (Friday) when I received an email that read:

"Your recent request for funds transfer has been processed in line with your instructions.

You should receive the funds shortly. Regrettably, however, there will be a delay of one day in the funds reaching your account. As a goodwill gesture we will therefore credit your account with a payment of £50. We thank you for your understanding."

I will be most intrigued and delighted if this credit appears in my account!

I am an investor in ICICI as I am/was in Icesave and Kaupthing Edge!

With just hours to spare I got my cash out of Icesave and then also out of Kaupthing Edge - with the exception of my ISA in Icesave (wanting to maintain its Tax status I was in the process of that transfer to NatWest when it went tits-up) ... I consider myself very lucky to have pulled most of my money when I did (despite everyone sying it was fine and I shouldn't panic!).

I have no intention of spending sleepless nights as I did last week, so I shall be acting on my ICICI Account immediately - when you have looked at the very real chance that your entire lifes savings will be wiped out, you act very cautiously indeed.

I admire tha cavalier approach by some above - I really hope that you do not feel as I did last week when my Icelandic Banks went with my money, it is not a nice place to be.

Have just accessed site with no problem. I needed some cash so I have transfered a sum out - will be interesting to see if it hits my linked account in the normal time scale

I have savings with IceSave(ISA), Kaupthing Edge UK(Now ING) and ICICI.
I have full faith in Gordon Brown to not let my money dissapear.
He saved my Kaupthing savings by facilitating a purchase agreement from ING.
He has guarenteed 100% of my savings from IceSave regardless of the FSCS limit.
He has promised to maintain my IceSave ISA's tax free status.

IF (and that is a big IF as I don't beleive it will) ICICI do go down then I'm sure Gordon Brown will act in the best interest of his people.
I will not be moving my money from ICICI HiSave account despite it being nearly £3k over the FSCS limit.

When we have one of the greatest economists of our time now as our Prime Minister why is there a need to worry?

Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

I have always found ICICI excellent to deal with- I have nowhere near £50K & my money goes in & out like a yo-yo! I made a withdrawal on Wed & I too had an e-mail yesterday apologising for a 1 day delay & stating £50 would be paid into my account-so I'll check again on Mon.
I also had some savings in Kaupthing but i'm hanging in there- panic withdrawals just make things worse.
I saved for my retirement all my working life,-my pension fund may have taken a knock just now but it will build up again,although it may take a while.
Maybe if we weren't all so greedy(well we DID hunt out & invest in the highest interest,instant access,non-British accounts!) we wouldn't be in this situation today-but then again we have to augment the paltry state pensions somehow since we were stupid enough to have some savings & hence can't get rent,heating etc,etc paid by the government.

Just logged on now - much quicker than last week. Transferred a bit out.

Transferred some out last week and it was fine - 3 days as per any BACS transfer. The bulk of mine is a term deposit that I'll leave there until next year. Like everyone here, obviously I'm a bit uneasy as I've been stung buy Icesave, but I'm in for less than £50k and this is (unlike Icesave which had this "Passport" agreement) FULLY covered by the FSCS.

If you're feeling uneasy, have a look at the FSA website and you'll see that ICICI is registered. Apart from being owned by Indians, it's pretty much a uk bank.

So - your exposure beyond ICICI is not to India, but to the UK FSCS. That's something I'm happy to sleep with.

How on Earth do I do it? I'm but a mere NHS secretary in this world, yet EVERYTHING I have predicted about the current economic meltdown has happened. Now, thisismoney.co.uk has withdrawn ICICI Bank from its 'best savings buys' list on account of its poor Fitch rating (BBB-). Had we taken similar notice when they withdrew Kaupthing and Landsbanki, many would not have had such a nerve racking week. Okay, so my savings with ICICI are guaranteed up to £50K, but do you REALLY want to chance things at the moment? If ICICI do go to the great cruncher in the sky who will take over the accounts? ING-Direct again? Also, FBN (Firstsave) have slaughtered their interest rates from 6 to 4.5%. I'm not hopefully, putting gloom and doom where its unwelcome, but facts are facts. In support of ICICI, they are a very responsible Bank who have not been greedy, stupid in their lending practices or, unlike the Western Banks, influenced by the fact that if the US do it, then so should we. I would say this to ICICI Bank - For the sake of financial integrity, issue a statement to your customers NOW!

Four transfers which I scheduled on Tues 7th were processed on 9th - I, too got the apology email. The total amount arrived in my HSBC account this morning as I was advised by phone that it would. Why they had a day's delay is not known but they seem to be back on course now. I await a second transfer processed on Sat - we're buying a house(unfortunately we have to move at this time) so the first transfers were necessry not a panic measure.

I've just spent about an hour trying to access the website - it's insanely slow this morning - but I did get there eventually and I appear to have been able to transfer some money.
Good luck all.

Agree with Dylkes. ICICI should issue a Bold statement in Big Font on their main page indicating their balance sheet / asset strength.

As Gordon Brown said, confidence is the biggest asset. If all depositors think ICICI will fail and pull out everything, it will become a self fulfilling prophecy.

Part of the problem is that in spite of the FSA protection for less than £50,000, the amount is not paid out rightaway - there is a potential 3 month wait. This causes people to want to pull out, further undermining confidence. In America, if a bank fails, the FDIC pays the protected amount within a week. I know it is fashionable to criticize America in this part of the world, but this is one thing the U.S has got right. They were used to banks failing and so they have put in a system in place. I am saying this as someone who lost money in an American bank last year. I was stupid and had more than the FDIC insured limit ($100,000) last year and the bank went belly-up. The $100,000 was paid in a week. No delay. There was no panic with depositors having to queue up. For the rest of the amount, they had to sell the bank's assets and I got 85% of the uninsured money (over the limit) back within the last year. I have no one to blame but myself for having more than the FDIC limit.

Today I tried login on to ICICI bank but I couldn't, called the call centre, but they couldn't action my request to transfer my money, said there was a technical fault and would be OK in a few hours. Not a good sign. Will try again later.

True to there word, I eventually managed to log on to my account at 1.30pm today, running very very sloooowly, but anyhow managed my transfer request. Fingers crossed that all turns out well.

I have been trying for the past three days (from this Monday, 20th October) to transfer a small sum from my ICICI account to another nominated account. Every day so far has been unsuccessful with the same error message coming up each time - technical error, please try another time.

Is anyone else getting this problem?

The reason most of us put our money into ICICI was that it was paying amongst the best rates, and appeared to be reasonably safe. However it is no longer among the best rates, and because how seemingly safe it is, is determined by the banking professionals based on the CDS of its parent company, it is now down at the bottom of the table published by the Fool in its recent "Good, the Bad & the Ugly" email. So many non panicking Fools will be quite calmly and sensibly reviewing their savings and deciding where best to place them.

Regarding this slow on-line access problem, there is an alternative. Fools may or not be aware that if you have not accessed your ICICI account for 6 months your access is automatically disabled. This happned to me so I phoned up. I was offered the option of authorising the transfer to my linked account over the phone, which I did following the ineviatable barage of security questions. Two alternatives - a free BACS transfer taking 3-4 working days, or a £20 CHAPS transfer ostensibly taking 24 hours. I say ostensibly because the confirming email now advises me that it will be processed in 2 working days, which Fools may wish to keep in mind if they may want their money in a hurry.