CHANDIGARH:ICICI Bank today announced that it has opened 22 new branches across the states of Punjab & Haryana this financial year. This is part of the nationwide branch expansion initiative undertaken by the Bank under which it aims to open 450 new branches across the country in FY’20, of which 395 have already been opened.
Of these new branches in the states, four are in hitherto unbanked villages namely, Rahra, Hayatpur, Jand and Sotha. Other branches have been opened in locations like Amritsar, Jalandhar, Bhatinda, Gurugram and Faridabad among others. The expansion in the states has resulted in the Bank now having a branch network of 522 branches and extension counters in Punjab & Haryana along with 1129 ATMs.
With this, the Bank has a wide retail network of nearly 5, 270 branches across the country. The Bank’s branch footprint now covers locations across the country from Leh in Jammu & Kashmir to Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu, from Naliya in Gujarat to Aizawl in Mizoram. Nearly half of the branches are in rural and semi-urban areas to facilitate financial inclusion in the country.
Speaking on the initiative, Mr. Anup Bagchi, Executive Director, ICICI Bank said, “We believe that a wide branch network continues to be important for retail banking. It helps deepen the relationship with the customer by serving them a wide range of products and offerings. More importantly, the branches offer consultation and guidance to customers for all kinds of banking requirements including mortgages, business banking, other loans and investments. Our strategy is to set up branches wherever business activity emerges. In line with this strategy, we have expanded our branch network by setting up 22 branches across Punjab & Haryana, prominent cities to emerging locations and even villages which were unbanked until now. This is a part of our nationwide expansion of setting up around 450 branches this fiscal in fresh catchments and micro-markets where economic activity is present. Of these, we have already set up 395 branches.
In the last few years, we have seen that the nature of business at branches has evolved. Customers are now more keen to seek advice and guidance from branches for complex transactions, loans and investments. For simple transactions, they prefer doing it over digital channels like internet and mobile banking. Our new branches too have been aligned to meet these evolving requirements. They sport a contemporary look and feel to provide a superior experience to our customers. The design principle focuses on enhancing digital transactions by introducing 24x7 ‘e-lobby’ at many branches, simplifying customer navigation with demarcated spaces for transactions as well as elevating customer engagement levels with exclusive engagement ‘pods’ for loans and investments at prominent catchment areas.“
Most of the branches are operational from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm while some are open till 8 pm. The branches will offer a comprehensive range of retail products and offerings like accounts, deposits, mortgages and loans like home, personal and auto along with a suite of banking solutions for businesses and NRI. Many offer locker facilities as well. Additionally, branches in semi-urban and rural areas will offer agri products, Jewel Loan, KCC, farm equipment funding and Self Help Group lending to cater to the requirements of customers in emerging locations.
The Bank also offers a slew of technology led innovations at its branches. The list includes:
‘Touch Banking’ branches: The Bank was the first to introduce these fully automated and digital branches, which are available 24x7, on all days. We have 4 such branches in Punjab & Haryana.
‘Insta Banking’ self-service kiosks: It is a first of its kind, strategic self-servicing kiosk in the banking industry. It is designed to provide a superior banking experience to the Bank’s customers. These touch screen kiosks allow quick access to 55 transactions like pan update, email update, account portability, re-issue of debit card, generate bank statements, balance enquiry, transfer funds, NEFT/IMPS and many more. The Bank has a robust network of nearly 80 kiosks across its branches in Punjab & Haryana.
Cash deposit and withdrawal machines: A pivotal part of the Bank’s endeavour to offer instantaneous service to customers, these kiosks enable account holders or their representatives to deposit cash in an ICICI Bank account in a completely automated manner with instant account credit, thereby providing convenience and ease of operations. This is in lieu of filling up pay-in-slip and manual cash deposit at the teller counter. These machines, also known as recyclers, circulate the deposited cash to be used for withdrawal purposes within the machines themselves, thus optimising the cash inflow and outflow automatically. In Punjab & Haryana, we have enabled over 80 such machines for the convenience of our customers.
‘Insta Banking’ (available in iMobile): It aims to reduce the time spent in filling up physical paper challans for commonly used transactions in a bank branch. Using this app, customers can pre- process their desired transactions anytime, anywhere before walking to the branch and save their valuable time. Over 65% of financial transactions at the branches are initiated by customers by using the pre-staging of facilities done through ‘Insta Banking’.