ICICI Bank 2016 Annual Report Download - page 13

Annual Report 2015-2016 11
Messages from Executive Directors
Fiscal 2016 was marked by a weak global economic environment, sharp downturn in the commodity
prices, gradual nature of the domestic economic recovery and high corporate leverage. Against this
backdrop, we continued to maintain and enhance the strength of our balance sheet with granularity
in funding, efficiency in capital usage and proactive reserving. With subdued corporate loan
demand, we increased the momentum in retail lending. The monetisation transactions in insurance
subsidiaries during the year demonstrated the significant value creation in the Group. We have
continued to build on our franchise through a robust funding mix, cost efficiency, digital leadership
and large physical footprint. We believe that, given our strong core earnings, healthy capital
position, large customer base, talented management team and substantial value in subsidiaries,
we will be able to enhance our franchise further and capitalise on growth opportunities.
N. S. Kannan
Executive Director
Rajiv Sabharwal
Executive Director
Vishakha Mulye
Executive Director
During fiscal 2016, our focus was to balance risks in the global economy - arising out of monetary
tightening in the US, continuing growth concerns in China and the sharp drop in commodity prices
- with the growth momentum in India. In this context, the Bank identified growth opportunities in
select areas with enhanced controls, while repatriating surplus capital and profits from its overseas
businesses. Accordingly, the Bank continued to leverage its strong brand, service culture and
technological capabilities to grow its franchise with multinational companies and non-resident
Indians. ICICI Bank became the first bank in India to launch its online Money2World service for its
customers. In the SME segment in India, the Bank continued to leverage its presence to grow in a
more granular manner and enabled a larger number of entrepreneurs to participate in the emerging
economic opportunities.
In fiscal 2016, the operating environment for the corporate sector remained challenging due to
high leverage, shortfalls in cash flow generation, continued weak corporate investment activity
and decline in commodity prices which had an impact on borrowers in commodity-linked sectors
such as iron and steel. During the year, we explored new income streams while proactively
monitoring our existing exposure and further strengthening our frameworks for exposure and risk
management. We focused on further enhancing our commercial banking franchise and incremental
disbursements were largely to higher rated corporates. In the new financial year, the Wholesale
Banking Group will continue to focus on enhancing the quality of the portfolio and the quality of
earnings by further developing our expertise in products, processes and technology to meet client
requirements and leverage growth opportunities in the market.
Providing exemplary customer service across channels continues to be our top priority. We
have made significant investments in Big Data Analytics, Multi-channel Architecture and best-
in-class Customer Relationship Management tools to ensure we have a 360 degree view of our
customers and can offer best suited products and services to them. In future, we will leverage new
technologies like Artificial Intelligence to drive customer engagement. We continue to innovate to
empower our customers - we dematerialised credit and debit cards on our digital bank, Pockets,
to allow NFC payments through mobile, introduced self-service kiosks and gave India its first 24x7
robotic lockers (Smart Vaults). Additionally, we added to our branch and ATM network – we are
now closer to our customers with 4,450 branches and have the largest number of 13,766 ATMs
across all private banks.
Vijay Chandok
Executive Director
(Designate), Subject
to RBI approval