ICICI Bank 2016 Annual Report Download - page 80

78 Annual Report 2015-2016
ECONOMIC OUTLOOK
During scal 2016, the global economic environment remained challenging and was marked by three key factors: divergent
monetary policy in advanced and emerging economies, slowdown in growth in China and decline in global commodity
prices. These trends led to signicant volatility in global nancial markets and currency depreciation in emerging market
economies. The Indian economy continued to witness a gradual recovery, with improvements in key macroeconomic
parameters. Ination moderated, interest rates came down, scal consolidation continued, foreign investments were
strong and the current account decit remained stable. Policy measures were taken in the areas of infrastructure, foreign
investments and nancial sector reforms and programmes were launched for nancial inclusion and inclusive growth.
However, the global slowdown, commodity cycle, gradual pace of domestic recovery and high leverage in the corporate
sector led to muted credit growth and an increase in non-performing loans, including slippages from restructured loans,
for the Indian banking sector.
For a detailed discussion of economic developments in scal 2016, please refer Management’s Discussion & Analysis.
BUSINESS REVIEW
Retail Banking
ICICI Bank has been a pioneer in introducing innovative products and services for its customers. Many of these products
and services have been industry rsts, thus becoming trendsetters. ICICI Bank has made digital technology core to its
strategy and has developed solutions which have made banking simple for its customers. Due to these solutions, the
Bank is an integral part of the lives of many of its customers who use the Bank’s applications for their diverse needs, even
beyond banking. The Bank’s solutions are also designed to cater to different life-cycle needs of its customers.
Last year, the Bank became the rst in the country to introduce contactless debit and credit cards using Near-Field
Communication (NFC) technology. This enabled its customers to make electronic payments by just waving the contactless
card near the NFC-enabled merchant terminal. In scal 2016, the Bank unveiled the country’s rst contactless mobile
payment solution to make in-store payments using smartphones. This solution provides the improved convenience of
Touch & Pay to the Bank’s credit and debit card customers, superseding the use of a physical card or cash, and is available
on Pockets, the Bank’s digital wallet. ICICI Bank also became the rst bank globally to launch mVisa, a new mobile
payment solution from VISA. With this service, users of Pockets can make cashless payments from their smartphones
using their debit card by simply scanning an mVisa Quick Response (QR) code at a merchant location without swiping
the card at a POS machine. This service provides customers the convenience of speed to complete a transaction along
with enhanced security as the card remains in the custody of the customer.
Pockets gained the distinction of becoming the largest e-wallet launched by a bank with over 3.6 million downloads.
Interestingly, 80% of the registered users on Pockets are new customers to the Bank. With Pockets, users can instantly
download the e-wallet, fund it from any bank account in the country and start transacting immediately.
ICICI Bank has been at the forefront of mobile banking technology. It was one of the rst banks to launch a mobile
banking application in India. The Bank launched the latest version of iMobile in May 2015. Today, iMobile is the most
comprehensive banking application offering over 150 services, many of which are industry rsts. Some of the features
available in the latest version are tagging transactions as favourites, direct call to call centre and iTrack to track all
deliverables from the Bank on the mobile.
In February 2016, the Bank launched a unique campaign, ICICI Appathon, a mobile app development challenge. This
campaign seeks to foster innovation and provides a platform for tapping into the immense talent of a techno-innovative
generation to bring new ideas and develop the next generation of banking applications on mobile phones. The Bank will
incorporate some of the winning ideas into its digital roadmap.
Business Overview