Remittance business soars for ICICI Bank

ICICI Bank has grown its foreign remittance business by over 60 per cent in the last three months of the financial year.

As on December 31, the country's leading private sector bank topped up inward remittances to $2.1 billion (Rs 9,300 crore) against September end's figure of $1.3 billion (Rs 6,000 crore).

Since the bank commenced operations in this line of activity with 3-5 per cent market share, it expects to close the financial year with 15 per cent share of the $20-billion non-resident Indian inward remittances.

"Adopting the alliances model, we have been able to garner presence and distribution reach as we set up operations globally. Our USP has been the use of technology as a differentiating factor to garner larger share of the NRI remittance business," said ICICI Bank senior general manager & head international banking group Bhargav Dasgupta.

Lot of Indian banks today have operations overseas and offer bank drafts for NRIs sending money to India. This procedure today takes a long time as drafts need to be couriered back and forth.

Alternatively a wire transfer from the US can cost anywhere between $ 35-45 per transaction.