ICICI Bank 2005 Annual Report Download - page 5

N. VAGHUL
Chairman
based products and services. They also started
delivering their products and services through
new channels like ATMs and the internet. New
players in the insurance and asset management
sectors also catalysed innovation in these
sectors, with a customer-friendly approach and a
wider array of choices for the customer on what
products and services they could have and the
channels they could use to access the provider.
This was backed by the simultaneous
development of a regulatory framework
covering all areas of the financial sector.
Prudential norms were introduced to improve
the quality of financial reporting and
capitalisation levels in the banking system.
Separate regulators were set up for the capital
markets and the insurance sector, to oversee
their orderly functioning within the liberalised
regime. The approach has been one of
combining dynamism with conservativism to
ensure healthy growth of the financial sector.
While there is a view that a gradualist approach
has slowed down the growth process relative to
other nations, this must be viewed in the context
of the health and resilience of the financial sector
despite the restructuring of the economy over
the past decade. While the scale of financial
intermediation in India must certainly increase,
we have been successful in creating an efficient
growth paradigm based on market forces
combined with high standards of regulation and
governance.
As we go forward, the financial sector has a
critical role to play in the full realisation of India's
potential. At the core of this is the need to vastly
increase the access to financial services in the
rural areas, particularly among lower-income
groups, as well as the poor in the urban areas.
This will bring people into the economic
mainstream, tap their productivity and result in
larger and larger sections of our people
contributing to India’s growth as well as
benefiting from it. We must leverage all our
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Message from the Chairman
existing skills - financial and technological - and
acquire the new capabilities necessary to make
this happen, partnering with government and
other financial, industrial and social
organisations to bring about widespread change
and prosperity.
At the ICICI group we see ourselves as a strong
and effective player in the financial system. We
have evolved and grown and changed with India
over the last five decades. We provide the full
range of financial services to corporate and retail
customers and are rapidly expanding our scale
of operations. Our strategy is to continue to
grow our existing businesses and create a
robust business model for rural India and the
urban low-income segment, play a serious and
proactive role in India’s growth and
devel opment and establ ish a meaningful
presence in target markets overseas. We believe
that given our innate strengths, we can realise
this vision.
Dickenson Tel: [phone]