ICICI Bank wins the inaugural Excellence in Remittance Business Award

AWARD: ICICI Bank has won the inaugural Excellence in Remittance Business award at the sixth Asian Banker Excellence in Retail Financial Services Award, the most esteemed, comprehensive and anticipated Awards Programme in the Asia Pacific that recognize the pursuit of excellence amongst retail financial institutions.

The bank received the award at The Asian Banker Excellence in Retail Financial Services 2007 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 at the Pudong Sharngri-La Hotel in Shanghai on the evening of June 8.

About 150 senior bankers from award winning banks in 22 countries across the Asia Pacific, the Gulf region and Central Asia attended the star-studded celebration of the region’s most outstanding retail banks.

The awards programme, administered by The Asian Banker and refereed by prominent bankers, consultants and academics from around the world, is the most respected award of its kind.

ICICI Bank has won the inaugural Excellence in Remittance Business award in The Asian Banker Excellence in Retail Financial Services programme.

This new product category was introduced to the Awards programme this year to recognise the bank with the strongest proposition and most notable achievements in its remittance business across the Asia Pacific.

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 online portal catapulted ICICI to double its market share of the Indian remittance sector in the last two years to over 25 percent 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.