This bank is offering good investment rates but there seems to be a rumour that it may be in trouble. Do you have any news onthis and also are UK investors fully covered by the FSA compensation scheme?

Thanks,

Pimberton

The popular belief is that investments are covered first by the Indian scheme which will be topped up by the FSA scheme but this will depend on exactly which company any investment is with. I have read somwhere that they are not members of the banking code though.

Personally I would not consider investing with them because of their lending policies.

If the FSA compensation scheme is important to you, you should invest in your own name with a mainsteam savings account in a major UK bank or building society. As soon as you start using overseas organisations, it complicates things.

Hi Maxsteam

Thanks for the post. I will stay clear of ICICI

Pimberton

ICICI are covered by the FSA compensation package. If you want to check on any bank just ring the FSA they will tell you if they are or not. I suggest you have a look at ICICI web site.

ICICI is just a trading name, like Barclays, Halifax, etc.. Most banks have lots of subsidiary companies. Some will be registered in the UK, some overseas, but ICICI, Barclays, Halifax, etc., are not company names. Before you try to find out if a particular investment is covered or not, you need to find out the exact name of the company holding the investment. The inference of the ICICI web site is certainly that investment are covered. Personally though, I would not be able to sleep at night knowing what they would be doing with any money I had invested with them.

They are certainly not a mainstream investment for the little old lady down the road to put her savings in.

Thanks Johnag, I will check things out as you suggest.

Pimberton

Don't put your money in foreign banks.

ICICI is an Indian bank which siphons money out of the UK.

I had an account with ICICI, it was a waste of time and I could not access my money for a month even though it was instant access. Your money goes to India. Wake up people - keep your money in UK banks because these are the ones who are being protected the most by the government particularly the big ones. Don't let others take advantage of British citizens on the cheap. Foreign banks will be allowed to go bust.

The government are likely to change their tune in their attitude towards foreign banks who do not have significant operations in the UK and take money away from our own banks. If everyone is fooled by higher interest and start moving their money into ICICI, the protection will be limited to the maximum allowed. UK banks will be indirectly protected for 100%. You have seen what happened with Iceland, if it happens again with a foreign bank wait and see what happens.

Invest your money in British banks who invest in British people and who the government has made clear they will protect above all others. They have made it clear they will protect the big UK banks.

Don't be fooled by high interest rates. If the rate is high, there is something cheap about it.

If you take your money out of UK banks to put into foreign banks people will lose jobs , taxes will increase and it will cause havoc. The government will soon change their tune. Why should they protect deposits of people who abandon UK banks for a bank that siphons money out of the UK and doesn't invest in people and jobs in this country?

They will keep funding the banks or part nationalise them to ensure the deposits are safe UK banks are very strong. We need to ensure they stay this way. This is not the time to be taking your money out of them.

I put my savings into Natwest to support RBS. They employ over 100,000 people in the UK and are a first class financial institution. I coudn't care less if I don't get the highest interest rate. I will only put my money with people who are investing in this country not some cheap bank who offers high interest rates for money you wouln't give them for their cause if asked.

People need to think about where they are putting their money and where it's going to and realise that we are responsible for what happens to our country.

ICICI is fully protected by the UK FSA compensation scheme up to £50k, it does not operate the passport system so payment will be from the UK and not India.

I've come to the conclusion that if something sounds too good to be true it probably is.

I've well and truly learnt my lesson and won't be putting another penny in a foreign bank and will be closing my ex Kaupthing now ING account as soon as the dust has settled.

Anyone offering significantly higher rates than other banks can only do so by taking higher risks with the money.

ICICI will lend money to poor Indian businessmen, farmers, etc., who often cannot afford the repayments and will then be pushed onto the street to starve. Morally this is wrong. Economically it is risky.

As mentioned above, ICICI is no more than just a trading name. Quite recently, people were saying that icesave customers were covered by the FSA guarantee. Similarly icesave is just a trading name. Any investment through icesave that went to Landsbanki Guernsey is not covered while an investment that went to Landsbanki Island hf. is covered. It is extremely misleading and very dangerous to simply say that ICICI is (or icesave was) covered by the FSA guarantee.

I mentioned Barclays and Halifax earlier and similar considerations apply. If you open a standard account in your own name in a high street UK branch it is extremely likely to be covered by the FSA depositor compensation scheme. However if you open an account in a high street branch of Barclays on the other side of the world, it is extremely unlikely to be covered.

It disturbs me greatly to hear people say that investing with foreign organisations should be considered as a mainstream investment for widows to put their life savings into.

Sounds like a bit of racism to me. Johnny foreigner was not involved in the collapse of Northern Rock, B&B, HBOS etc. but then the collapse of these banks was probably better than any Johnny Foreigner could have orchestrated because they are British Banks! If you think that British bankers are better than foreign bankers than I would hazard a guess that you are probably the biggest BANKER in Britain.

" I coudn't care less if I don't get the highest interest rate." with quotes like that maybe you are running RBS????

The difference between a bank lending to someone who can't afford the repayments in the UK and in India is that here, the victim ends up with no car and a council house. In India, the victim ends up starving to death. Any bank deliberately trying to make money out of this type of lending will have to do so without my money.

ICICI is not appropriate for the general British public.

People are ignorant.
They don't know what they are investing in.

If I was Indian, I would have the same feelings.

This stunt by ICICI is cheap. They are not doing things the right way.

They should behave like other respectable foreign banks and open high street branches in the UK if they want to be a global bank or focus on attracting people who want to invest in their county in a non obtrusive way.

A good example is AIB. They have several branches in the UK but they don't have .co.uk website.

Globalisation is a farce.

This is the FSA's fault by giving licences to everyone for everything.

This is just the way things work. We don't need to explain it or argue that everyone should be the same.

What a load of crap it is a global market Firms in britain shut down every day and move east west any where there is a cheap buck to be made at the expense of british workers. The crisis started in the capital of capitalism not lending money to india.

Ihave £ 20000 in icici i am scottish and when the R B S starts paying Decent Interest rates to natives instead of buying dodgy loans on international money markets i' ll put my money in rbs.

Why shouldn't the ordinary punter get a return on his money house buyers who have been borrowing it have seen their houses going up astranomical and unsustainable amounts and some *** in Nothern Rock thought that would go on for ever hence the 125% mortgages

I think there is racism in some of the posts on this issue.

Why on earth should banks have branch networks?? Welcome to the internet age! Part of the reason why internet banks can offer better rates to savers is that they are not burdened with the costs of a branch network. But the key point for savers is to know whether or not a particular account is covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. If it is, and subject to the FSCS conditions being met (amount less than £50,000 and so on), I cannot see why it matters at all what kind of activity a bank gets involved in, whether it is 'foreign' or indeed anything else . The worst that can happen if it all goes *** up is that you have to wait some time for your money - but if you don't need access to the money straight away, keep chasing the best rate....