ICICI Direct Review And Brokerage Information

In this ICICI Direct Review, I am going to review the brokerage which is one of the largest stock broker of India.

ICICI Direct was the biggest stock broker in India in terms of number of active clients but was toppled by Zerodha in Year 2019.

About ICICI Direct :

As I mentioned earlier, ICICI Direct is well known brokerage house in India. ICICI Securities is member of ICICI group and has more than 10 Lakh customer base.

They offer services in various segments including:

• Equities
• Derviatives
• Currency
• Commodities
• NCDs
• Wealth Management etc
• NRI Demat account

The best part of them which I like is, they provide 3-in-1 demat account, that means, demat account and Trading accounts are integrated to Savings Bank account provided by ICICI Bank.

Because of this, transfer of funds become seamless between trading and Bank account.

ICICI Direct Brokerage Charges:

Default brokerage charges of ICICI Direct is as below table. But it changes as per the plan you choose:

So as you can see, they charge on percentage basis of the total value. Higher the investment amount, higher will be the brokerage charges.

In comparison to above, discount brokers charge flat fee around Rs 20 irrespective of the investment/trade value hence enabling huge savings.

The worst part which I dont like is, being a full service broker they have a clause of minimum brokererage amount of Rs 35 per trade.

So when you trade Rs 1000, as per the plan brokerage should have been Rs 5.5 but they charge Rs 35 making it very expensive for small traders.

They have two different types of plans

• I- Secure Plan : Fixed brokerage plan
• I Saver Plan : variable brokerage plan depending on the trade volume

Company charges on per lot basis for options trading, hence definitely ICICI Direct is not best broker for Options trading in India.

Also Call and Trade facility is available and charges Rs 25 per executed trade.

ICICI Direct Transaction charges:

These are the charges in addition to the brokerage charges. Every stock broker charges this but the amount varies from broker to broker.

Segment	Transaction Charges
Equity Delivery	0.00325%
Equity Intraday	0.0325%
Equity Futures	0.00190%
Equity Options	0.05000%
Currency Futures	0.00100%
Currency Options	0.004000%
Commodity	NA

ICICI Direct Account Opening Charges:

Margin/Leverage/Exposure Provided by ICICI Direct:

The brokerage company offers reasonable margin for all the segments.

ICICI Direct Trading Platforms:

They offer trading platforms for all type of devices namely desktop, laptop and mobile devices.

ICICI Direct Trade Racer:

This is desktop based trading platform and need to be installed in your system. Ideal for day traders.

Some of the salient features of Trade Racer are:

• View all trending scrips in a single screen
• Customisable color and layouts in the charts
• Various screeners to identify all the stocks matching their criteria
• Heatmap to identify the market behavior

There is a subscription fee of Rs 75 per month for this trading software however if you generate brokerage more than Rs 750, the fees is waived off.

ICICI Direct Trade Racer Web:

This is exactly same as Trade Racer but no need to install any software. Being a web version it is not as fast as desktop version. It can be accessed from anywhere with good internet connection.

ICICI Direct Mobile:

They have mobile trading app what I feel is, it is not very user friendly . If you see the review and ratings of ICICI Direct app at playstore, the user feedback is also not very promising.

Advantages and Disadvantages of ICICI Direct:

Following are the Pros and Cons of ICICI Direct,

Disadvantages:

• One of the broker charging highest brokerage
• No support for commodity trading
• Mobile app is not very good
• Minimum brokerage clause make it expensive for small and beginners
• No brokerage calculator is provided

Advantages:

• 3-in-1 demat account , easier flow of funds
• One of the most reputed name in brokerage industry.
• One stop solution for all the investments and also insurance

Membership Details of ICICI Direct :

ICICI Direct Review – Final Words:

ICICI Direct is best known broker and credit of introducing online trading to India should go to them. Because of their group bank they are able to acquire large number of customers.

However, their brokerage is very high and they justify it in the name of personalized service. If you are a long term investor, brokerage doesn’t matter and can open account with them.

However, they are big no if you are interested in intraday and F&O trading. I suggest you to choose any one of the discount brokers.

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