Icici Bank In Talks For Online I-T Filings

ICICI Bank Ltd has initiated talks with the Income Tax Department to work out a mechanism that will allow the bank to file online income tax returns and deposit taxes on behalf of its account holders.

In anticipation of the deal working out, the bank was already started extending services like income-tax advice and assistance with physical filing of returns for account holders who maintain their salary accounts with the bank, Mohan Shenoi, senior executive vice-president for retail banking, said.

"The bank expects a positive response from the I-T department soon and this will be a great value-added service to customers who maintain their salary accounts with ICICI Bank," said Shenoi.

"This is part of the bank's philosophy to have a product ideal for every stage of an individual's life from childhood to retirement and the bank is confident employers would like to gift its employees with this perk," he added.

In keeping with this philosophy, the bank has decided to extend its deposit scheme for children which works on the basis of pocket money gifted by a parent to the child for each instance of good behaviour and obedience, which is transferred from a parent's account to the child's account.

Shenoi said, "The account is available online for the child to check that every act of good behaviour is rewarded, but the child cannot draw money from the account without the parents' sanction".

For adults in non-salaried and salaried categories, the bank will also be launching a tailor-made investment advisory service within this fiscal, said Shenoi.

This would complement existing product lines already available to customers through ICICI Bank branches, like broking services, ICICI's tax planning bonds, ICICI-Prudential insurance products and normal banking services.

To improve access to its services, the bank expects to launch a massive expansion programme to set up offsite ATMs, nearly doubling the existing numbers.

In addition, the new branches added onto the ICICI Bank network through its takeover of Bank of Madura were being migrated and integrated onto ICICI Bank systems and support to provide seamless banking services to clients.