ICICI bank wins 'Excellence in Remittance Business award'

Mumbai, Jun 12 (UNI) ICICI bank has won the inaugural ''Excellence in Remittance Business award for outstanding performance in 2006''.

Increased international movement of white-collar professionals is making electronic remittance services more popular than ever, but beneficiaries are often still dependent on extensive physical networks, a release issued by ICICI bank said.

The bank received the award at The Asian Banker Excellence in Retail Financial Services Awards ceremony, held in conjunction with the region's most prestigious retail banking event, the Excellence in Retail Financial Services Convention. The ceremony was held recently in Shanghai.

Despite an overwhelming response from over a dozen banks, particularly banks from India, Indonesia and the Philippines, where inward remittance volumes have traditionally been among the highest in the world, ICICI stood out for its remarkable success in rolling out a predominantly Internet-based remittance service. The popularity of the on-line portal catapulted ICICI to double its market share of the Indian remittance sector in the last two years to over 25 per cent of the total. At the same time, an automated processing system substantially improved cost efficiencies and allowed ICICI to charge one of the lowest remittance fees in the region. In addition, ICICI has leveraged on its remittance business to expand its customer base and boost the performance of its other retail banking products and services.

Over 140 banks and financial institutions in 22 countries across the Asia-Pacific, the GCC region and Central Asia were evaluated as part of the Excellence in Retail Financial Services programme; Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Kazakhstan were new entries.

UNI