Reliable, but, with a few flip-sides. Review on ICICI Securities

Hello everybody,

So much has been said and discussed about ICICI and other e-broking sites. Here comes my experience with ICICI. I have been with ICICI for more than a year now and I have not used any other e-broking sites.

Account opening

This is an area where lot of middlemen and groups come into play. Finally, they do not do what they promise. It does take quite a lot of days for the account to get opened, IDs to get enabled and trading to commence. They can improve a lot here. There is a provision to track the status of the application from ICICI website.

They are reliable

I would give them a 10/10 when it comes to reliability. Not all stocks are tradable in ICICI. This is because ICICI screens out stocks which may be illiquid or have got a bad reputation in the market.

Hassle free link between DEMAT & Banking account

Since ICICIDirect uses ICICI Bank account for trading, moving funds in and out has been made very easy. All that has to be done for moving funds in is to do an allocation under various heads (Primary market, Secondary market, MF etc)

All in one

Trading in IPO, secondary market, mutual funds (including SIP/SWP), F&O - all have been consolidated. A word of caution though, all MFs are not traded.

Portfolio & WatchList

Portfolio watcher is provided for equities and MF. Really handy as this shows the realised income and notional profit. BUY/SELL links are available from the same page. Setting up a watchlist and observing the stock price movements helps to track the stock and make and entry at the right time.

High brokerage

Undoubtedly ICICI has one of the highest brokerage. Comes close to 0.9%+

Slow speed of the trading site

This was one of the major cribs of all ICICI direct users. Few months back some performance improvement was done and now it is much improved. There were times when a login would be denied or an existing login would be thrown off just like that. Still, their BSE link is slower when compared to NSE link. The BSE prices are a bit delayed and traders might not find this particularly attractive.

My conclusion

This site would be a haven for investors who would like to park their funds and check the balances occasionally. There is nothing in it for Traders whose primary objective would be lightning speed and low brokerage.

P.S.