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Mumbai: ICICI Bank, India's largest private sector bank, has frozen the accounts of many non-resident Indians (NRIs) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for their failure to submit personal documents as demanded by the bank. The original documents kept at the bank's Mumbai office got damaged in July 2005 floods. The bank had asked customers to give fresh documents, including those for opening savings and current accounts, demat accounts for trading and investing, home loans and auto loans, and ICICI Direct online trading accounts. Apart from NRI customers, the damage has also affected several account holders in India. While ICICI Bank had given its customers in India time until December 25, 2006 for submitting the required documents, NRIs in the UAE were given a deadline of January 31, 2007 for submitting fresh documents. "Several accounts of customers who have failed to meet the deadline have been deactivated," an official at the ICICI Representative Office in Dubai said. "It will definitely affect our customers. At least that way we can expect them to quickly come and rectify the problem," he added. The official, however, said that the accounts would be reopened after the documents were submitted. It may be mentioned that the private sector banks' provisioning for bad loans rose 57.9 per cent (Rs 1,732.58 crore) to Rs 4,726.39 crore. Provisioning accounted for 74 per cent of their net profit and 9.9 per cent of their interest income. As many as 10 banks have made higher provisioning than the industry average, which slowed down profit growth to 14 per cent.
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