Sriram Iyer never expected to experience a Canadian winter.

But Iyer, the president and CEO of ICICI Bank Canada, has gotten used to the cold since moving to Toronto from his native India in 2003 to help start the firm from scratch. His bank, which recently expanded to Calgary, is now receiving as warm a reception in Western Canada as it did in Ontario.

ICICI Bank Canada, the subsidiary of Mumbai-based parent ICICI, has traditionally served mostly Indian immigrants, who still comprise a large contingent of the 240,000 account holders in this country. But, as the firm's $4.6 billion worth of Canadian assets indicate, the locals like it, too.

1. What did your parents do for a living?

Photo by Larry MacDougal, Business Edge
ICICI Bank Canada chief executive Sriram Iyer recently attended the grand opening of the Indian-based bank's first Calgary branch.

"My father is retired now. He used to work for the government of India. My mother was a homemaker."

2. What was your boyhood dream?

"I didn't have any specific dreams in terms of a career, just that I always wanted to do well. I always wanted to shine in whatever I did. But I was always interested in finance. I was always keen from my days in business school that I had to do well in India and get into financial services."

3. What steered you toward engineering?

"I specialized in mechanical engineering because I had a passion for automotive stuff."

4. How did you get into banking?

"When I was doing my MBA, I had a penchant towards financial services. It was very clear that I was going to join a big financial services firm. On our campus, we had something called the 'Day Zero' jobs. They were the most coveted jobs. There were a few firms which come on Day Zero, before even the campus interviews start and ICICI Bank was a Day Zero job. I managed to get into ICICI."

5. How did you end up moving to Canada?

"I started with the Canadian ICICI Bank in Bombay (now known as Mumbai) in India. That's the financial capital of India. I worked there for about three years and then I got an opportunity to work in my home town, which is Hemmai, in the southern part of India. I worked there for about four years and then, finally, I got a call from our senior people in the bank. They said: 'How would you like to move to Canada as No. 2 (in command)?' I said: 'Yeah, that sounds fine.' " 6. Did you ever have any intention to move here before that?

"No. That was 2002. Back then, the company was going international. We had identified about 10 countries to start with, initially. At that time, it was a dream posting. The offer I had was to go help start ICICI of Canada from scratch. I moved to Canada in July 2003."

Sriram Iyer

7. What was it like adjusting to Canada?

"It's a beautiful country and Toronto is a beautiful city. I never felt like I was living in a foreign country. People were friendly and everything was going well, except for the weather. The winter is not so good here. You're not used to that kind of temperature in India, but I got used to it."

8. What is your bank's target market?

"When we started in Canada, the target market was the Indo-Canadian community. But, very soon, we realized that the target market was too small for our initial growth plans, so then we started looking at the mainstream community. We did a lot of branding exercises in 2004 and 2005 to expose our brand to the larger Canadian population ... Today, I can say with confidence that we're a pretty well-known financial service across Canada."

9. Who are your main competitors?

"We are a full-service bank here, so we have all products and services. There is not one single competitor for us. In each product category, we compete with different people. In online banking, our competition is ING Direct ... In terms of (ties) to India, our competition is another Indian bank in Canada, which is called State Bank of India."

10. Canada's Big 5 banks would probably like to have more immigrant clients. What can you do for immigrants that conventional banks can't?

"You're right. Big banks really relate to the fact that Canada is the land of immigrants. Each bank has set up cultural market solutions to target specific communities. For example, Royal Bank has a cultural market solution to target the South Asian community. Our strength really comes from the size of the bank that we have in India. Anybody who comes from India is very aware of our bank ... So we have a program called Hello Canada, which is targeting newcomers in Canada. Most of those newcomers could be our customers back in India, so we don't want them to (have) trouble getting credit cards and a mortgage. Hello Canada is also applicable to (people) from other South Asian countries. We're doing something different, which we believe the big banks are not doing as well."

11. What do your clients use the bank for?

"For the Indo-Canadian community, this is their bank for leaving their money here - the savings accounts and the chequing accounts - and also for sending money home (to family members).

"We also try to fill their cross-border banking needs. If they have an account with us already in India, we can facilitate inquiries about that account in India. The mainstream community comes to us mainly for the high deposit (interest) rates that we offer on savings accounts. We also offer competitive rates on mortgages. There are a lot of customers that are now coming to us for mortgages."

12. Can you comment about the complaints that your bank failed to deposit promised $20 bonuses into the accounts of customers who brought new accounts to your bank?

"That happened about two years ago. It's not something of the recent past. During that time, we had migrated our system from one (network) platform to another (network). We did have a few difficulties in accessing certain accounts, but those are all things in the past now. We have absolutely no such issues and things are working as well as expected."

13. How do you respond to allegations that your bank failed to track and manage accounts properly?

"We don't have any such complaints as of now. Today, I have hardly any complaints from customers ... If we ever get any complaints, we have a complaints officer who handles them on a priority basis and ensures that we get back to the customer within 24 hours."

14. Do you still outsource your call centre to India?

"That's right. We outsource a lot of things to India - not just the call centre ... Our bank office operation is in India. That's one of the reasons we're able to offer higher (interest) rates here. We're able to save lots of money by outsourcing to India, and those savings are passed on to customers in (the form of) higher rates for deposit products and lower rates on mortgages."

15. What are ICICI's growth plans in Western Canada compared to Ontario?

"We want to be seen as a bank that's across Canada. We started off in Toronto. Toronto was our local base, so we had six branches to start with. Having said that, now our focus is expanding into the West. We have already opened two branches in Vancouver and one in Calgary. We continue to look for more opportunities to open branches in the West.

We certainly will open branches in Alberta and B.C. We do have a lot of customers from these provinces ... Most of these customers are non-Indians. So we've been actually successful in directing mainstream Canadians to bank with us."

16. What about Saskatchewan and Manitoba?

"Eventually, we'll go to all of those places, but right now we want to see how Alberta is performing.

After Calgary, we will start to open a branch in Edmonton."

17. Is your bank going to acquire Canadian Western Bank or Laurentian Bank, as has been speculated?

"There's nothing specific about any acquisitions. Being a global bank, we continue to get a lot of opportunities to look at. We evaluate them on a regular basis and see if they fit our strategy in both countries (India and Canada) or not."

18. What business sectors do you see as vital to your firm's expansion?

"Let me tell you about what we are doing now in Canada. This credit crunch has actually opened an opportunity for us. Many banks are going to ship their assets. They completely want to exit Canada and go back to their home countries because of all the problems that they're facing in their home countries.

"We're in reactive (mode) and doing some asset purchases from these banks, and these are good assets. These are big oil companies, especially in Calgary, and large companies based in Quebec or Ontario. We're able to get them at a huge discount because banks just want to go away immediately. We're able to become a name lender to these large companies and we hope to start a relationship by which we can sell more products to these large companies. We have a few sectors in which we want to be reactive, one of them being oil and gas. That is why the Calgary branch is so important for us. We'll be able to station a few people here and look at that (industry) and get business ... A lot of Indian companies are going out and doing acquisitions outside India ... Because of our history, major Indian corporations have all maintained dealings with us for long-term funding and all that. Even today, when they go out and acquire assets, their first port of call is ICICI Bank. They come to us for advice, they come to us for structuring, they come to us for syndication of their (credit) facilities. We're able to guide them and do what they have to do outside India."

19. What do you anticipate in terms of other banks from India and elsewhere trying to enter the Canadian market?

"I think there is huge interest in opening up shop in Canada. We've had a regular stream of ... Indian banks trying to touch base with us, to see how our experience has been in the past. I would say, in the next few years, you're going to see a couple more Indian banks trying to start operations in Canada. I'm not sure about (banks from) other countries. From Asia, I would expect most banks to come here ... These banks have become so big by just being in their own country that they're expanding outside China and India. I'm just speculating here. I know Indian banks for sure will come here and open shop. I'm just guessing about other banks."

20. What would you do if you weren't running ICICI Bank Canada anymore?

"Honestly, I haven't thought about it. I'm so passionate about my job that I don't have time to think about those kinds of circumstances. I do love to travel and play squash. I'm also picking up golf. But right now, my work is my No. 1 passion."

ICICI Bank Canada

* Brass: Sriram Iyer, president and CEO; Vaman Kamath, chairman; Atul Chandra, senior vice-president and chief financial officer.

* Profile: ICICI Bank Canada is a wholly owned subsidiary of India's ICICI Bank Ltd. It offers a full range of personal, commercial and cross-border banking products and services.

* Stats: ICICI has nine branches in Canada, including six in Metro Toronto, one in Vancouver and another in its suburb of Surrey, and one that opened recently in Calgary. The firm manages $4.6 billion in assets and 240,000 customer accounts in Canada.

* Website: www.icicibank.ca

* HQ: Don Valley Business Park, Suite 1200, 150 Ferrand Dr., Toronto, M3C 3E5 * Phone: 1-888-424-2422

Sriram Iyer

* Title: President/CEO, ICICI Bank Canada.

* Born/raised/age: Rajgot, India/Chennai, India/38 * Education: Iyer obtained an engineering degree from India's National Institute of Technology and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management at Bangalore.

* Family: Married, one eight-year-old son.

* Career: After earning his engineering degree, Iyer joined Indian automaker Tata Motors as an engineer. Three years later, he completed his MBA and then joined ICICI Bank in 1996. After holding several executive positions with the bank in India, he moved to its Canadian subsidiary in 2003 as vice-president and chief operating officer, its second-highest ranking executive. He was later promoted to president and CEO.

* Moonlighting: Iyer is involved with Pratham Canada, which works toward ending poverty in India.

* Passions: Family, playing squash and golf, and watching sports on TV.

(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)