ICICIDirect Review
In the series of post on Stock Broker’s Review let me review ICICIDirect.com’s services and share my views and experience about them.
Positives
- Very well integrated with the bank account.
- Very easy to use mutual fund and IPO investment using an online interface.
- Transfer of money from Bank to Demat Account and vice versa is instant and hassle free.
Negatives
- Brokerage – They have reduced it by 50% recently but yet it is highest and you cannot afford as a trader. At least I cannot.
- There is virtually no phone trading facility available.
- They still charge you fees for using web interface to buy mutual funds.
- One of the biggest disadvantages of ICICIDirect account is too many restrictions.
- There is no option for you to sell your cash based purchase the same day.
- At times you do not have the option of BTST (Buy Today, Sell tomorrow) and no one could answer me why?
- If you open an account with ICICIDirect the representative will recommend you an ICICIBank zero balance account but suddenly after an year or so they will convert that zero balance account into a normal savings account where you need to maintain an average quarterly balance. So do not go with ICICIDirect.com unless you already maintain and ICICI Bank account and only prefer to do year+ investments and do not prefer to trade in Equity Market along with investment.
I am planning to get my ICICIDirect account closed but the issue is I have some ELSS funds into my ICICIDirect account I may need to wait for 3 more years before I can withdraw my ELSS funds because transfer of those would take hell lot of effort from my end.
If you have some more experience with ICICIDirect, share them in comments below.
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I have bad experience with Religare as offline trader. They don’t invest in researching the scrips. Now I closed my account with Religare. Ho is Sharekhan for online day trader?
Abbas, Wait a day or two and I am writing my experience with ShareKhan and I will share here.
Abbas, I have just complete my views on ShareKhan and you can see them here – http://shabbir.in/sharekhan-review/
Hi, I often visit your site for information. This let me to create another blog which gives a full list of all available mutual funds in one page with it’s daily NAV. I update this list DAILY with some outsource help from INDIA.
does this make sense ? it’s at listmf.blogspot.com
Your blog give a detail analysis and my blog provides a simple full list of offered mutual funds in specific currency(INR, SGD etc.) I was wondering if I could link specific schemes to your specific blog posts for details.
do write me back in my “about us” comment if interested.
Tony Parera
Tony, you are doing good job but I would not prefer to use it because I would prefer to have more frills to it like email me daily the list of my choice or even search.
hi i can help u out from this bad experiences related to trading
i am working in indiabulls and u can contact me 9590876770
no problem at all we will provide u better service
Kini, A customer lost is lost for the rest of the life because I do not see any single reason to even give you a call. Would you ?
Standard investment advice is that you should invest in a diversified mix of stocks, bonds, and money market funds.Be confirmed about the company before investing.Don’t invest a large amount out money in a single company.
Dear Sir,
1.I have online account with sharekhan.While opening they said yearly charges is 300Rs.But they charged 400/- rs I asked y.They said all the price have been increased & we have notified u regarding this.They have mailed me after 1 week of deducting.More over the contract we have signed shows 300/-Rs. Tried a lot they dont accept.
2.Like this they got 2000/-Rs initially as brokerage charge.In this if buy shares they deduct & credit the brokerage amt,i.e AMC 2000 they call it is zero brokerage.Initially mkt rep explained about all I asked about this 2000rs he said it is advance type whenever u purchase they will deduct according to the scheme.I didn’t use full amount(2000Rs)in 12 months & all of a sudden they totally removed this amount & they deducted the amt from my trading a/c. When enquired they said its valid for 12 months only. We cant do anything.Then I explained them what mkt rep discussed while opening since he gave me in righting I fought but they never accepted.If he has informed I would not have chosen this scheme since I’m not a trader I’m an investor.Then that guy called me said sorry I have made mistake we cant do anything & said I can help you by reducing the brokerage charge to compensate this. But nothing done. I think since u r are buying value is more u don’t face any problem they are taking care. Since my investing value is less they are not caring I think. My friends also face some or the other problem with them.Ok. You tell one thing where to register complaint regarding broker problem like the above? is there any separate cell in SEBI.
Kindly reply
Thanks in advance
I fully agree with Mr. Shabbir’s view on ICICI direct.Their brokerage is haigh and we have to maintain a quarterly average balance of Rs. 10000/- in the saving’s account linked to the demat account.But the online trading facility is very user friendly and now they provide better service than before.
The brokerage as we talk about is high, but there are no hidden charges, all charges are transperent and if we see it the brokrage comes out equal to that of other brokers with there hidden charges. You can sell the cash based transactions the same day. Call n Trade facility ( phone trading ) is available for all customers. And quaterly balances are now norm in all acoounts other then salary account in all the banks.
Opening your ICICI Direct account is a nightmare. The files get lost, no one has a clue if your file never arrives in the head office and the login id and passwords take ages to arrive. I have experienced it myself. But if you are patient enough to overcome all this you will be rewarded by a good ‘autopilot’ service mentioned in point 1.
What autopilot you are talking about?
I’ve opened a demat account with ICICI Direct a month back and I was told that 0.55% would be the brokerage charge for every transaction. Then I bought 10 shares of Dabur at Rs.97 and to my dismay I was charged Rs.28 for this transaction which is roughly 2.8%. Then I realised that they have a brokerage plan which is as follows.
1. When transaction value is less than Rs. 4545 then 2.5% or Rs.25 whichever is lower would be charged .
2. When transaction value is greater than Rs. 4545, only then 0.55% would be charged as brokerage.
The sad part is that I was not told about the first slab during the account opening and I felt like being cheated when I came to know about this later.
Being a small investor and new entrant to the market, I prefer to invest and trade in small volumes in different shares for which I find ICICI Direct to be unsuitable.
Apart from this, ICICI Direct website is well organized and user friendly.
Dear Manoj Ji, you can contact me for online trading cum demat account. I am from Sharekhan Ltd, Delhi-9911669792
Dear Sanjiv,
Thanks for your reply… I’d definitely contact you when I plan to open another demat account..
Assalam walekum Shabbir,
Myself is Yameen. I am a NRI based in Gulf and new to investing in mutual funds. I am trying to open my Investwise Account with ICICI Direct for that purpose. I am going with ICICI Direct for the simple reason that I have my NRE Account with ICICI Bank.
Issue is that among other things ICICI Direct is asking for Power of Attorney relating to my NRE Account with ICICI Bank (authority to operate/debit/credit/block the bank account).
Could you please guide whether POA for NRE Account is a standard procedure and safe also. Off-course as per ICICI Direct this is a standard procedure applicable to all applicants of ICICI Direct Investwise Account.
Looking forward to your reply.
Regards,
Yameen
yameen_h@yahoo.com
Yes we all have that. It is something where you need to give the power to your broker to place trade for you. If you still have issues with the content of POA you can get it read by some lawyer as well.
I had an ICICIdirect account for around 3 years. I found their services extremely unreliable, unprofessional and expensive. My experience with ICICIdirect are mentioned hereunder.
OPENING ICICIDIRECT 3 IN 1 ACCOUNT TAKES ONE MONTH-
February 2008- Went to ICICIdirect office in Garia to ask for the procedure to open a demat account. The customer care executive claimed that they were the most trust worthy broker house and claimed other brokers play with the customers money and ICICI does not. Impressed by this I agreed to open their 3 in 1 Account. The 3 in 1 Account, includes a zero balance ICICI bank account in addition to the trading and demat accounts.
Within a few day they sent their representative to my house to do the needful. Initially I had to pay Rs.750 as a One time Account Opening Charges. (The same has now been increased to Rs. 975!), I understand the 1st years Annual Maintenance Charge was included in that amount.
It took the ICICI guys nearly one month to open the demat, trading and bank account!
Reason for choosing ICICIdirect- My previous investments in equity markets were through mutual funds and I was new to the Stock Market. The demat account offered by a well known bank seemed ‘safe’. As I realized later it turned out to be a big mistake.
THE ICICIDIRECT EXPERIENCE-
RUDIMENTARY FEATURES-
Initially there was no trading software, it is very difficult to buy or sell a stock if you cannot see the current prices. You had to open some other website to see the live prices before you transact. Later in 2010 they introduced their trading software ‘traderacer’. However this software is full of bugs and expensive, I have covered this later in my review.
They do provide some research reports but of very ordinary quality. Most of the companies they write about are well researched companies, sufficient data about them are anyway available in the free domain.
Through their website they also try to sell other products like, insurance, loans, Wealth management and PMS etc. It is very disconcerting to see ICICIdirect trying to sell the financial products from ICICI group companies instead of making their demat services better and reliable! It should be understood that those who have a ICICIdirect account will be mainly into equity or derivative.
RIDICULOUSLY HIGH BROKERAGE AND CHARGES-
The brokerage for the the default I-saver plan is 0.75% (for quarterly turnover of Less Than 10 Lakhs) The brokerage on addition of Service Tax (ST), Securities Transaction Tax (STT), SEBI turnover charges ,Transaction Charges (inclusive of Service tax) and Stamp duty comes to around 0.9% net! I have not heard of any other broker house which charges such ridiculously high brokerages.
http://content.icicidirect.com/mailimages/variable.htm
Now there is another plan wherein they charge 0.55% plus all taxes and applicable transaction charges. I had asked to my brokerage plan to be changed to that on many occasion. I had been told that the changes would be effective from the next quarter. But next quarter the brokerage plan never got changed. The customer care executives had no idea why the change in brokerage was not effected and promised to get back to me later (which they never did). The same thing happened to me on 2 or 3 times!
On top of the ridiculously high brokerage they charge an Annual Maintenance Charge of Rs. 450 (Comes to around Rs. 500 on addition of service taxes). For Physical statement they charge even more- Rs. 500 plus taxes. They charge this AMC in advance for every year.
As I have mentioned earlier they launched their trading platform ‘traderacer’ amidst much hype. The platform is full of bugs. It often does not not show/update the prices or any other data (open, high-low, volume etc) of any of the saved scripts! Repeated calls to ICICIdirect’s helpline are met with replies like “there seems to be some technical problem”, “please try later” etc. However they charge Rs. 75 per month for this useless feature!
The charges for trade racer come to Rs.900 annually(Rs. 75 per month), an amount you will agree is very hefty for a trading platform that does not work! Add the AMC of Rs.450 the annual charges come to Rs. 1350 (around Rs. 1500 including all taxes)!
Also their charges including demat charge, off market sell, transfer charge, Pledge Creation/Closure/Invocation charges are ridiculously steep
http://content.icicidirect.com/mailimages/bank fee schedule.htm
All in all ICICI not only charge a hefty joining fee, ridiculously high brokerage, high Annual Maintenance Charge and other various charges which are amongst the highest in the industry!
FREQUENT TECHNICAL SNAGS AND POOR CUSTOMER CARE-
Technical glitches are frequent. Often the website is down and only a message is displayed stating ‘Site unavailable because of technical problem’ (Or something of that sort). Whenever there is a big movement in the market the website becomes unavailable.
There have been many instances where I could not log in despite providing the proper login-id and password. Also the website tends to log out, when one tries to give a buy or sell order.
In 2008 & 2009 there were many instances when the website was not accessible because of ‘technical problems’. However 2010 was the worst- there were instance where online trading system as well as the phone-order service of ICICIdirect broke down for the entire trading day.
http://www.moneylife.in/article/8/6939.html
http://www.moneylife.in/article/6957.html
One can imagine the plight of lakhs of day traders and swing traders, let down by ICICIdirect, who depend on the markets for their livelihood!
ICICIdirect does not have a dedicated helpline. One has to go through the ICICI Bank helpline in a series of complicated steps, with a wait time of up to10 minutes. On top of that the “customer care” executives never have any idea about the problem.
IT TAKES NEARLY ONE MONTH TO CLOSE ICICIDIRECT ACCOUNT-
All in all I was so bugged with the pathetic service offered by ICICIdirect that I decided to close the account in January of this year. As I have explained below even the process took nearly one month and 4 visits to their banks/offices!
January 03, 2011- Went to ICICI Bank at Gariahat to transfer my shares held at my ICICI demat account to my Indiabulls demat account. Note that no ICICI Bank south of Gariahat branch offer demat services. That means ICICI bank does not offer demat services in its branches in vast areas of South Kolkata including Garia, Tollygunge, Behala, Thakurpukur etc! I am sure residents of other cities will face similar problems with their ICICI demat account. On asking about the procedure to close the demat account the employee at ICICI Bank, Gariahat branch told me the trading account has to be closed first. The same cannot be done by ICICI Bank and for that one has to go to a ICICIdirect office!
January 05- After the shares were transferred to my Indiabulls account, I went to ICICIdirect office at Garia. I filled up the necessary form and My Relationship manager (who had never bothered to interact with me before in the last 3 years) told me that it would take around 15 days to close the trading account! She told me they would let me know once the trading account is closed.
January 19- My trading account was finally closed. Note that ICICI did not bother to inform me my phone or mail. I checked my account online to see that the the trading account had been closed.
January 24- I went to ICICI bank Gariahat branch again to close my demat account. I paid the ridiculously high transfer charges for the share transfer by cash and filled up the demat closure form. I was informed it will take a further 7 days to close the demat account!
January 25- Since I had applied for demat account closure I went to ICICI Bank, Garia Branch to close the zero balance bank account. Note that once the trading and demat account are closed the zero balance bank account linked to the trading/demat account will automatically get converted to a normal ICICI bank savings account, which will entail a minimum quarterly average balance of Rs. 10000!
January 31- The demat account was finally closed. I checked at the NSDL website to confirm the same.
As you can see the procedure to close their trading and demat account takes nearly one month!
ADVICE TO PEOPLE WHO WANT TO OPEN A DEMAT ACCOUNT-
DO NOT open an account at ICICIdirect, their services very unreliable, unprofessional and expensive. You will suffer the way I have suffered.
Do not open a demat account offered by any bank. Typically they charge high brokerages and annual charges. Also remember that demat services is a secondary business for them and customer satisfaction for banking services and not demat services is their priority.
Open a account with a broker who offers software based trading. Trading interface which open in the browser tends to get disconnected easily especially if the internet connection is slow.
ADVICE TO PEOPLE WHO WANT TO CLOSE THEIR ICICIDIRECT ACCOUNT-
Congratulations! You are correct in thinking about closing your ICICIdirect account. It is just not worth continuing with the pathetic services offered by ICICIdirect.
Transfer your shares to some other account before you start the procedure to close ICICIdirect account. Do not be compelled to sell your holdings because of the poor services offered by ICICI.
AMC is deducted for every year in advance. Start the procedure of closing the trading and demat account ten months or so into the current subscription. If the Demat Account is closed during the year, no pro-rata refund of Annual Service Charge will be made by ICICI. As I have explained closing their trading and demat account takes nearly a month, so plan accordingly.
If you have a zero balance bank account linked to your demat/trading account close the bank account immediately after closing the demat/trading account. This is because the zero balance bank account linked to the trading/demat account will automatically get converted to a normal ICICI bank savings account, which will entail a minimum quarterly average balance of Rs. 10000! And we all know that ICICI charges a ridiculously high amount for non maintenance of minimum quarterly average balance.
http://www.icicibank.com/service-charges/regular-savings-account.html
To summarise demat services offered by ICICI are extremely unreliable, unprofessional and expensive. STAY AWAY FROM ICICIdirect.
Excellent review adi2001us! I had an ICICIdirect account for 4 years and I faced pretty much all the problems you have mentioned. Highest brokerage, abnormally high annual charges, very basic features….
But the biggest problem is the frequent technical snags when the website becomes unavailable. I am using indiainfoline these days and find it much more reliable, glitch free, cheaper and also it has a easy to use interface.
I was so bugged with ICICIdirect that I closed my account there. As you have mentioned closing an account with ICICIdirect also is a time consuming affair. It involved 3 or 4 visits to ICICIdirect office and ICICI Bank, which is quite inconvenient for a person working in some concern. Unfortunately like all ICICI group companies ICICIdirect is only intersted in making profits without bothering to provide proper services, I would recommend all ICICIdirect users to switch to some better and cheaper broker……
Many thanks for making a truthful effort to explain this. I feel fairly strong about this and would like to read more.
If it’s OK, as you learn more in depth knowledge, would you mind posting more articles
similar to this one with more information.
I am using ICICI direct for last ten years and do not find exit due to heavy holding of equities which involves a hefty transaction charges. I am also not finding it easy to sell the equity at this stage when the market is coming down and I have already suferred the losses of about 45 %. Kindly suggest me some way out and in the mean time the name of broker where I should open the account. I am living in Delhi and my daily turnover is about one lakh in the margin trading.
yours sincerely
S.S.BIsht
ssbisht51@yahoo.com
Bisht, You should opt for Motilal or Sharekhan for lower brokerage but losses of 45% is huge and so before making such losses make sure you understand the markets.
great post for stock market investors and i suggest opt2wealth for stock tips, wealth management and wealth creation in different other ways…
I went through the website of Opt2wealth , looks interesting but the problem is that the recomendations given by them are mainly in small volume stocks. It could be a risk for invetstors at the time of exit. Even high volume entry is also not possible
Hi Shabbir,
I am having a ICICI SB salary account. I am planning to open a ICICI direct demat account. My purpose is for holding some shares, buying and selling in long term basis. However, as per the forum comments all are most negative on ICICI direct. Could you please guide me whether i can go ahead with ICICI direct demat account or not? If not please suggest a good demat and trading account having both online and phone support.
Thanks in advance.
If you are fine paying very high brokerage then you can have an ICICIDirect account or else Sharekhan is better alternatives.
Thanks Shabbir. I am already having a demat account with Aditya birla money but the branch is closed in my native. Could you please suggest whether creating a Aditya birla money online account is a good choice?
I have no experience with them and to be honest I am hearing the name first time from you and so would not be the right person to comment on it.
hi,
i am completely new to this world of investing, at first i was thinking to open a 3 in 1 a/c from icici because all the things were available there at one place but u have criticized it a lot, so a bit confused. i want to invest slowly for long term and i am not going to start with a huge investment in market, starting with 40k-50k, so which would be best for me. and also trading offline would be better for me or online trading.
Motilal Oswal and ShareKhan would be good option
but sir i was thinking that an integrated 3 in 1 account would be good, so was taking hdfc and icici as option. is hdfc bad too.
and i didn’t toook oswal and sharekhan as option because some sites/blogs were criticizing them greatly. they say that sometimes it doesn’t go well with the transfers of funds.
Tushar, I am yet to see any fund transfer problems with ShareKhan and Motilal Oswal but the problem with ICICI and HDFC is the service.
See http://shabbir.in/hdfc-securities-review/
k sir i’ll go with your recommendations, but online services of motilal and good na, i’ve read a story about hdfc that there site regularly 2-3 hours on maintenence during trading hours.
hoping that there’ll be no such problem in sharekhan and oswal.
All I can is I am having my trading account in MOSL and Sharekhan without much problems for few years now.
ok sir i’ll go with one of them, thanx for the help.
and i’ve read that there is some limit that should be in your integrated saving account, like 5-10k in icici.
is the same applies to oswal and sharekhan?
If you open a new bank account with ICICI, they can have the minimum average quarterly balance requirements.
Hi, viewing all the things said here i bought 10 shares of icici bank from sharekhan and 10 shares of icici bank from ICICI direct just to get a hang of brokerage difference ( price of shares brought wwas same ) . But you know what there was difference of only 5 rupees!!! So how does this affect me as a investor for long term. And well ICICI site was well laid out in comparison to sharekhan.
You have done a purchase of roughly 7k and the difference is 5 Re and that means if you are a big investor, that can be sizable difference. Apart from that as an investor if you invest in MF online through ICICIDirect, they charge fees where as ShareKhan is free.
Now coming to other issues, What if you want to sell those 10 shares in both tomorrow for some bad news or something. ICICI does not allow BTST (Buy today sell tomorrow) unless you have that as selected when purchasing today. Something I did not liked when I was using account with them.
Well i did a btst of those shares on icici u do not need to select anything please go and have a look, just fyi. For Mf icici did the CVSL kyc by sending there RM which sharekhan where i have account and am closing it did not bother.
BTST works at times but not always and when it does not work, try calling the customer care and they will have no clue at all.
What you are saying is right bro. I have practically all my MF purchases from 2008 till now in ICICI Direct. Due to some issues, I wanted to close the account as their Customer care sucks. After a lot of follow up, they said I have to clear the account, meaning, withdraw all the mutual funds, shares etc and once the balance is nil, they will be able to close the account. I still have some ELSS running for this FY that will run for 3 years, Infrastructure bond that will mature in 15 years and so on… So I finally gave up the thought of closing, but I have started investing directly in HDFC mutual fund with a login.
You can still close the account if you are willing to take the pain. I did took the pain but then decided against closing it.
Convert all your MF into offline mode. I did the same for my ELSS funds and so as of now have no MF in my ICICIDirect account but has kept the account because it is just few hundreds a year and I can use it in future.
instead just do a transfer out to your HDFC account from icici or vice versa. MF are never linked to your trading accounts u just need to tell the registrar quoting ur folio number and it will be done.
No Anurag you have to tell you MF houses to convert your online folio to an offline folio.
Hi Sir,
I have a Salary account with ICICI. I got a Demat acct today. I am new to trading, I was told by the bank that they provide services with charges like 0.55% and 0.5% for intra day, with better services than the other firms. Now after going through the above queries I understood that only after the transactional amt of Rs 4545, we will be charged @0.55% else @2.5%. Is it correct, if it is so then as a new trader I’m sure I will not trade for such amount, so please advise me whether to continue or not. .
Thanks,
Narendra.
Narendra, I will suggest you should not be using ICICI Direct for trading(intraday or positional) because their brokerage is way too high for you to make any money.
Dear friends
I am approached by ICICI direct to start their lifetime brokarage ( Rs 50000) where brokerage will reduce to 25% or so. Now it is 55%. My monthly transaction cost in ICICI DIRECT is coming around 800-1000 Rs.
Pls advise if any body has taken this scheme or any good bad experience.
Reducing the brokerage is always good but make sure you ask if there is any other costs like minimum transactions / brokerage per month.