ICICI Bank Opened 101 Gramin Branches across Villages in Six States

ICICI Bank, the largest private sector bank of India on 13 December 2012 opened 101 distinct gramin branches or rural branches as the part of its financial enclosure plan. These branches were opened in villages which lack the banking facilities, across six states of India.

All these gramin branches of the ICICI Bank would remain open for 4 hours per day and 6 days per week. These branches would offer banking services like fixed and recurring deposits, saving bank accounts, remittances, tractor loans as well as Kisan credit cards. Just like their current rural branches, ICICI will have at least 3 employees at the bank. Depending upon the business of the bank, ICICI might also make an addition of ATMs to a few of these rural branches.

After these branches, ICICI has a total of more than 400 rural branches as well as 5000 customer service points which in all serve over 10000 villages in India. The country network of ICICI is around 2800 branches as well as 10000 ATMs.
Formally, gramin branches were opened in 19 districts of six states namely, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh. Cost incurred on establishment of each branch was estimated to be around 450000 Rupees.
 
In 2012, ICICI opened around 2 million no-frills savings accounts, adding to a total of around 12 million to the category. Additionally, ICICI also offers electronic benefit transfers for the purpose of payment of wages to the workers of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme as well as pension and social security beneficiaries. It had also launched Saral Money Prepaid Card with Unique Identification Authority of India.