Icici Ropes In Post Offices To Sell Bonds

ICICI has roped in post offices to market its safety bonds. The term lending institution will also market its fixed deposits, mutual fund products and ICICIDirect.com products to investors through 1.6 lakh post offices across the country.

ICICI is the second institution after IDBI Mutual Fund which has tied up with post offices to leverage their network for selling its products.

ICICI Capital Services head and joint general manager Amitabh Chaturvedi said: "We are starting off with a vanilla product -- ICICI Safety Bonds. It is a pilot project which has been launched 64 post offices of three cities, Mumbai, New Delhi and Chandigarh. We will also market our other products such as fixed deposits, mutual fund products and ICICIDirect.com products through the post office network."

According to the agreement, post offices would act as marketing associates for ICICI safety bond issue and will stock, collect and transmit application forms along with cheques/ payorders to the nearest ICICI Bank centre.

"As of now only banks can send acknowledgements. We will approach the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for an approval so that post offices will also be able to acknowledge the forms," said Chaturvedi.

Post offices have a network of around 1.6 lakh branches across the country. "The national rollout will be done in another six months and post offices will also be able to gain by way of fee-based incomes. They have deputed two to three staff in the post offices for selling the financial products."