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By Chandani Jayatilleke

Seylan Bank has made a strategic plan to be the 'best bank' in the country in terms of services, quality products, efficiency and customer care services. To ensure this quality, the bank envisages to obtain ISO certification in several areas of operations and also to obtain a Fitch Rating.

"We are in the process of strengthening certain areas of operation in order to obtain the ISO certification," its Director/General Manager/Chief Executive Officer, Rohini Nanayakkara told the Daily News last week. This recognition will help enhance the bank's image further," she said.

Following a successful financial year 2002 the bank posted the highest ever profit of Rs. 668 million. As at December 31, 2002, the bank's assets grew to Rs. 67.8 billion with a return on average assets (ROA) of 1.04%. Increased earnings of (EPS) Rs. 15.20 doubled its share price from Rs. 26 to Rs. 52, a phenomenal growth for shareholders yielding a return of 105%.

The bank's main income remained fund based and Net Interest Income amounted to Rs. 3.2 billion while fee based and other income stood at Rs. 1.5 billion.

"Seylan continues to consolidate its business backed by the team spirit, good governance policies, advanced IT solutions and adding value to our customers," she said in an interview.

Following are excerpts:

Question: What do you attribute this success to?

Answer: We've been able to achieve these successful financial results owing to our strategies, practices, processes and organisational climate towards customer service orientation. This effort was supplemented by continuous monitoring and refining of our plans and goals using the Balanced Scorecard that captures financial and non-financial measures, enabling us to translate strategies into a linked set of actions.

Secondly, we emphasised in developing Human Resource (HR) skills of our employees through various training programs here and abroad which resulted in offering a quality service to customers.

Thirdly, we made substantial investments in the IT sector, totalling Rs. 320 million to upgrade and introduce new IT systems to increase the efficiency of our online systems.

Q: What are the major areas which have contributed the most to this success?

A: We have done extremely well in areas such as Treasury, Corporate banking, Offshore banking, foreign exchange sector, trade finance facilities and credit cards division. These sectors have contributed the most to our success.

Our innovative savings scheme Merit Rewards was a huge success. Last year we presented rewards amounting to Rs. 19 million to over 700 customers under the Merit Rewards scheme.

The bank also pursued marketing strategies overseas to tap remittances of Sri Lankan expatriates. A growth of 33% in Western Union remittances was also recorded during the course of the year.

Q: What progress has the bank made in improving its branch network?

A: We have a network with 100 branches which are operated online. About 60 branches are connected to the ATM network and we plan to increase this to 75 at the end of the first quarter of this year. Together with the largest retail/wholesale chain, Sathosa, we introduced a customer loyalty card and Sathosa has agreed to expand the number of network terminals to 200. We are also one of the few banks to offer internet banking services and at present we have a small number of customers who are using internet banking facilities.

We also had the opportunity to consolidate business in the North and East following the peace initiative and opened two fully automated branches in Jaffna and Trincomalee. Currently, we are planning to open more branches in the area in a bid to strengthen our process.

Q: Does the bank plan to raise funds through debentures and share issues?

A: Yes, we are planning to raise fresh capital up to Rs. one billion to improve the bank's capital ratio. This will be done through a debenture issue and a non-voting preferential share issue.

Q: Accessibility to lending has been an issue for many Small and Medium sector industrialists? How would you propose to support these groups?

A: We have focussed special attention on the SME sector lending with a Seylan SMILE fund. The bank has allocated Rs. 500 million for this purpose and already disbursed funds in terms of loans to the value of Rs. 10 million.

For farmers, we have special schemes such as Forward Sales Contract and farmer Credit cards. At present, we have issued over 300 credit cards for farmers and plan to expand the services to many areas this year.

We have also expanded this service in Jaffna by giving loans to fishing and agriculture communities.

Q: What are the future plans of the bank?

A: We are quite pleased with the economic recovery and the proposed financial sector reforms. Banking has become a very competitive sector in today's business world. In order to meet the expectations of the stakeholders and become the best bank in Sri Lanka, we will strive to improve in all areas.

We will innovate products catering to the different market segments from corporate finance to micro finance, extending to the rural sector.

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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