With all the goings-on with the Icelandic banks Icesave and Kaupthing, little seems to have been said about the other favourite foreign bank of recent times, India’s ICICI.Â
ICICI was near the top of the best buy tables for a while, and gathered a fair bit of attention because of its high savings rate – because of this there are likely to be quite a few UK savers invested in the bank.
Following some negative reactions after Icesave went bust (due to the fact that he’d been pushing Icesave for some time, and some felt a little let down, even though the safety of the bank hadn’t been a factor in the recommendation), Martin Lewis has posted some info on how safe he thinks ICICI is, and what would probably happen if it went bust.
As ICICI is fully registered with the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), if you have £50,000 or less in the bank, it will be protected. More than that, and it won’t be covered, unless the UK government was to decide otherwise.Â
As we’ve learned, it’s impossible to guess whether a bank is safe or not, as there have been some big, unexpected casualties recently. Although you could look at some bank credit ratings (here’s a recent table), it’s probably pretty pointless. The best option is probably to spread your cash, making sure you have no more than £50,000 in each UK registered bank (and check they’ve got seperate registrations with the FSA for FSCS protection).