Someone was asking about ICICI Direct account and its benefits..my very close friend has 4 accounts in ICICI Direct and the information I get from him when I talk to him is given below. I have no direct or indirect interest in ICICI Direct ( I dont even have an account with them ).
1) Their biggest advantage is their back office.They give you all reports very accurately like trading profits ( with buy/sell dates,qty,dates etc) and long term capital gains ( with buy date,qty,rate, cap gains etc ) so well that one has no trouble in filing his IT return .All tax statements are available so that the same could be handed over to CA for return filing.Else in other brokers we have to calculate all this in excel sheets which is a very tedious task particulrly if shares are bought 2-3 years back and sold for LT capital gains then segregating trading shares and LT cap gains shares is very tedious job..
2) One log in for trading,demat,Mutual Funds and bank account. Investor gets his credit of the shares sold in 30 min from sale transaction.
3) They have various brokerage plans. My friend has 4 accounts in his and his family members names and the biggest account is his own account where he pays upfront charges of Rs 10000 per year and the delivery brokerage for this account is 0.15% or Rs 15000 per Rs 1 Cr delivery......we many times ask why he pays so high brokerage and his answer is safety and reliability of large amounts and demat accounts,faster speed,and succession planning is very easy as all the shares standing in account holders demat account get transferred to his nominees account in case of unfortunate event by just giving a death certificate.
4) They have funding facility for shares to be bought but my friend has not used it anytime so he does not know much about it except rate of interest they charge on their funding is 12 % p.a.