Chanda Kochhar named Retail Banker of 2004

ICICI Bank topped the charts among retail banks in India by a wide margin in The Asian Banker retail financial services award for 2005 in the Asia-Pacific region.

Citibank and HDFC Bank came in second and third, respectively. Chanda Kochhar, executive director, ICICI Bank, has been named Retail Banker of the Year 2004.

The business growth throughout all areas of retail banking made ICICI Bank the largest retail financier in India with over 10 million retail customers in 2004. "The fundamentals of being successful is to be competitive and build up scale of business," said Kochhar.

Even as foreign banks have made beelines into the retail banking arena, ICICI Bank is confident that it has an edge of at least three to four years over the competition.

"It will take new players time to reach a scale of Rs 70,000 crore in terms of portfolio size," she added. In five years, the business has grown throughout all areas of retail banking to make ICICI Bank the largest retail financier in India with a 30 percent market share in lending, and a 23 percent market share in credit cards in 2004.

Over 70 banks in 14 countries across Asia were evaluated as part of the excellence in retail financial services program by the Asian Banker, the Singapore-based authority on strategic business intelligence to the financial services community.

In the process and technology category ICICI Bank was only rivalled by HDFC. "Technology has been a key contributor to ICICI Bank's position of strength in the Indian financial services sector to cope with large volume of customer transactions and acquisition, escalating from 3 million customers in 2001 to over 10 million in 2004," stated Emmanuel Daniel, managing director and editor-in-chief of The Asian Banker in a press statement.

ICICI Bank's strong technological and sales infrastructure is synergized with its human skills, making it the most successful retail bank in 2004.