ICICI Bank Launches Digital Solutions for Participants of Capital Market and Custody Services

ICICI Bank announced the launch an array of digital solutions for participants of the capital market and clients of custody services. The solutions enable various participants in the sector including stock brokers, Portfolio Management Service (PMS) providers, Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs), Foreign Direct Investors (FDIs), and Alternative Investment Funds (AIF) to seamlessly meet all their banking requirements. The Bank has launched these solutions to offer expeditious onboarding and convenience to all participants of the Indian capital market which has seen significant growth in the last few years.

The newly launched ‘3-in-1’ account enables the clients of stock brokers to digitally open online trading, demat and savings account in few hours from anywhere across the country. The facility empowers stock brokers to integrate their trading and depository systems with the Bank through API, providing them with the advantage of real time information on availability of investor funds.

The Bank has also enabled providers of PMS services to digitally open savings account and demat account in a single working day, significantly reducing onboarding and activation time.

Additionally, the Bank has launched a digital platform for onboarding and registration of FPIs/FDIs from any country across the globe. The platform helps FPIs/FDIs to upload documents and information seamlessly for pre-verification, thereby paring the registration and onboarding time down to a few days. 

Speaking on the launch, Mr. Sumit Sanghai, Head- Large Clients Group, ICICI Bank said, “Indian capital market has witnessed significant growth over the last few years which can be gauged from the increase in number of demat accounts, rise in AUM of the mutual fund industry and surge in capital flows into the country. The market capitalisation of listed Indian corporates has increased from ~ INR 148 trillion to ~ INR 257 trillion over last five years. We believe that the market will continue to experience robust growth and provide impetus to India’s journey towards becoming a USD 5 trillion economy by 2025. The digital set of solutions launched by the Bank will help the participants of the capital market and custody services meet regulatory requirements, significantly decongest manual processes, thereby improving their operational efficiency and scalability in business.” 

The key services and offerings of the digital solutions for entities in Capital Markets and Custody Services:  

·              ‘3-in-1’ account facility for stock brokers and clients: The facility enables investors to open a demat, savings bank and trading account simultaneously in a completely digital manner, within few hours. This facility enables the investors to simply block funds in the account towards a particular transaction, instead of transferring the funds to the brokers. This gives the investors the flexibility to pay only when the trades are executed. Additionally, the brokers can integrate their systems with the Bank to get real-time information on availability of investors’ funds.

·              Digital account opening for PMS clients: As a custodian, the Bank offers first-of-its-kind solution to open digital demat and bank account for end clients of PMS. The account is opened with a simple digital journey in a single day as against the physical account opening process which takes 7 to 10 days.

·              Digital on-boarding and pre-verification of FPI/FDI clients: The Bank offers state-of-art digital platform for onboarding of FPIs/FDIs. The digital process does away with longer turn-around time required for dealing with multiple time zones. The clients can fill the application form online and upload the supporting KYC documents such as Certificate of Incorporation, Memorandum of Association, Regulatory Licenses, etc. for pre-verification process. Once queries, if any, are resolved through the interactive query resolution mechanism on the platform, the clients are required to send the physical documents to the Bank, as required by the regulator. The digital process simplifies the on-boarding journey and reduces the time taken to open custody account, to few days from industry practice of 2 to 3 weeks and eliminates exchange of documents over email.

·              Self-service portal: The Bank offers a self-service portal to clients of Custody Services including PMS, AIF and Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) that provides 24*7 digital access to custody holdings, transactions and various reports through ‘Web Custody’, a new feature of Corporate Internet Banking. The Bank also provides access to ‘E-Protector’ application, a digital dashboard for real time monitoring of margin utilisation, margin per script and authorisation of trades for clients availing derivative clearing services.

·              Value added services for AIFs: The Bank offers solutions to AIFs including services such as fund accounting, forex, escrow arrangement, digital collection and payment solutions. The Bank’s latest fund accounting software has the capability to manage all asset classes including regulatory reporting apart from web based access to AIF and its investors. The Bank also extends customised escrow services for diverse requirements of AIF portfolio companies such as share purchase agreement, share buyback, merger, demat escrow, RERA accounts and credit linked arrangements.

·              Digital collection solutions: The Bank offers customised solutions to collect funds and margin money from investors. The list of collection solutions include digital channels such as e-collections, e-mandates, e-NACH and UPI interfaces. These channels are integrated with the client’s systems through state-of-art APIs. It helps them for automated reconciliations and efficient cash flow management. 

·              Digital payment solutions: The Bank offers tailor-made solutions to participants of capital market and custody services to carry out various payments such as exchange pay-in, investor payment, expense payment to vendors and statutory payout. The participants can directly integrate with the Bank’s systems and UPI stack, and embed the payment solutions within their ERP systems. This can be done with API integration with the Bank in a secured and speedy manner. The integration helps the participants with real time status update, faster credits and automated reconciliation and validations with the client systems.