Author: Peter Page 30 / 31

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ICICI Bank in Canada is a CDIC-insured online bank in the Canadian high-interest savings account market. It has six branches in Canada. Most relevant for me are the branches in Surrey and Vancouver.

ICICI seems like a rather mysterious bank, and a quick search on RedFlagDeals.com yields some mixed reviews about its customer service (but as I’ll discuss shortly, ICICI isn’t after the “service and features” niche in the high interest savings account market). It certainly doesn’t give me the same warm fuzzy feeling as the account I have with ING Direct. But hey, I’ll be a guinea pig and sign up with ICICI and document the entire experience.

Why I considered ICICI

Quite simply, its HiSAVE account currently (July 2007) has the highest rate at 4.5%. HSBC Direct is offering a 5.0% promotional rate, but that only lasts until October, and then the rate reverts back to a “regular rate” (which was 3.5% before the promotion started). The other banks hover around 3.5% to 4.1%. To be honest, the 0.4% doesn’t make that big of a difference if you already have another account at 4.1%; however, if you’re looking to open a new account, why not go for the one with the highest rate?

ING Direct vs ICICI

I lump ING Direct and ICICI Bank in the same category. I consider this to be the “dump money like a term deposit and then transfer money back to another bank when you need it” category.

With other banks such as Citizens Bank and PC Financial (see my reviews on CB and PCF for full details), you can do things like pay bills online, and pair a high-interest savings account with a more chequing-like account to get free cheques, Interac capability and more. Therefore, the other banks are well-suited for almost completely replacing the need for a traditional bricks and mortar bank. With ING Direct and ICICI, this is not possible (ICICI does have a chequing account, but the fees prevent it from being comparable to the other banks), and you are very dependent on having an account with a more fully-featured bank in order to do anything with your money.

At both ING and ICICI, you can withdraw money for free from their (very few) ABMs. However, I work very close to the ING Direct branch in Vancouver and have never used its ABM, simply because I use my Citizens Bank account for my regular transactions.

With the ING Direct Investment Savings account’s rate a full 1.0% below that of ICICI’s HiSAVE account, ICICI is certainly worth a look for me.

ING Direct does have two feature advantages over ICICI:

• ING Direct will pay any service fees for ABM money withdrawal at other machines, up to 4 times per month
  -Again, because my Citizens Bank account has all the features I need, I never use my ING Direct card. Whenever I need money from ING Direct, I simply withdraw it electronically to a linked account at another bank.
   
• ING Direct sends a fun quarterly newsletter with facts about its products and the odd cultural fact about the Netherlands.
  Overall, ING Direct is a lot better at marketing. But perhaps they cannot offer a better rate because they invest so heavily in PR.

The application

ICICI Bank currently has a referral promotion where if you are referred by someone and open an account with an initial deposit of $100 or more, both you and the person who referred you will get $20. I quickly sourced a referral on the RedFlagDeals.com forums and received a referral e-mail in my inbox a few minutes later.

I have now filled out the online application form on the night of Sunday, July 22nd, 2007. It asked me for basic information such as contact info and Social Insurance Number. One thing I noticed is that the sign-up form was not encrypted (no https:).

To activate my account, the instructions state:

“Simply send us an initial deposit for your new account in the form of a personal cheque, with your name pre-printed, from any Canadian Financial Institution. Make the cheque payable to yourself in the amount of your initial deposit. Please write the ICICI Bank Canada Temporary Reference number in the memo field of your deposit cheque.”

“Your new ICICI Bank Canada HiSAVE Savings Account will be activated once your cheque towards initial deposit is cleared. You will receive a welcome letter in the mail which will contain your 10-digit Internet banking user ID and in a separate mailing you will receive you internet banking password.”

I will mail the cheque tomorrow morning.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

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