Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes ban impact: Footfalls rise 70% at ICICI Bank; Chanda Kochhar says this is ‘not a business opportunity’

ICICI Bank has seen a 70% rise in footfalls in its branches across the country as people stood in long queues to deposit and exchange old currency notes, managing director & CEO Chanda Kochhar told a business news channel on Thursday. As on September, it has 4,468 branches and 14,295 ATMs.

Kochhar said some of the ICICI Bank branches opened at 8 am. while the rest began operations at 9 am. “We had started moving currency from yesterday early morning, the currency moved throughout the night. So, we have stocked up the branches well,” she said, adding that the bank has trained employees, created extra cash counters and added some extra facilities for senior citizens.

Though Kochhar said ICICI Bank has seen a ‘very good’ growth in deposits, she declined to give a daily deposit number. “Clearly yes. This is a time when banks will see good growth in deposits. But right now, we are not looking at this as an business opportunity, we are looking at this more as a day of serving the customers so that they can meet their needs.”

According to her, the move to demonitise existing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes reduces the liability of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) because some amount of the money will go off the system, and secondly, a lot of that money will come into the banking system. “So, it will increase deposits. I think the numbers are known. Everybody said the overall number of the currency in circulation was Rs 14 lakh crore, now it is upon us to arrive at what percentage of that would come into deposits and what would go away,” Kochhar said.

Kochhar said that none of the branches has run out of cash. “We have been monitoring very clearly at what rate the cash is being given out. So, we have done a second round of replenishment in many branches. So, we did not run out of cash.

We will open ATMs by early evening itself,” she said.

ICICI Bank