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| Wednesday, 10 November 2004 |
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Rienzie T. Wijetilleke is 65 today : The Banker as native son by Ajith Samaranayake At 65, Rienzie T. Wijetilleke, the Chairman and Managing Director of the Hatton National Bank (HNB) appears as the personification of banking in Sri Lanka. With 44 years of solid experience behind him he can justly claim to have enriched not merely Sri Lanka's banking sector but also its socio-economic life as well. Yet Rienzie Wijetilleke is an essentially simple man. He is no Brahmin with his head in the clouds but a man with his feet solidly planted on the good Sri Lankan earth from which he has derived inspiration for some of the most innovative ideas which have radically transformed the very nature of Sri Lankan banking. Closely attached to his extended family, his temple at Ethulkotte and his alma mater Wesley College he is emblematic of our times as one who has reached the pinnacle of his career through merit but has not lost his head. Rienzie Theobold Wijetilleke was born on November 10, 1939 in Hikkaduwa in the Galle district to a middle-class family in the then colonial Ceylon entering on the twilight of British imperial rule. His father Tudor was in the employ of the Ceylon Government Railway while his mother Regina was the daughter of a Postmaster. There were eight children in the family - three boys and five girls - and Rienzie was the youngest of the sons with two sisters younger to him. This was the kind of solid middle-class stock which formed the backbone of the society of its time and Rienzie was lucky in this early nurturing in the bosom of an extended family. Young adulthood But much of his childhood and young adulthood is bound up with memories of Kotte to which the family moved when Rienzie's maternal grandfather took a house as Bangalahandiya in the future political capital of Sri Jayawardhanapura Kotte. He had his education up to the fourth standard at CMS Ladies' College and completed his education at Wesley College, Colombo. He had studied science with the intention of applying to the Medical Faculty but his life was to take quite a different path. He served as Science Assistant at a Government school in Polgahawela in 1959-60 and it was then that he applied to the Bank of Ceylon and was accepted. This was the time when the legendary C. Loganathan's writ ran large at the Bank of Ceylon as its General Manager with the eminent lawyer H. V. Perera as Chairman. Rienzie served in the Pettah and Kollupitiya branches of the bank and gained invaluable experience. In 1966 the bank chose him for a stint at its London branch and on his return Rienzie served as Assistant Manager at Nuwara Eliya. Decisive turn In 1972 Rienzie's life took a decisive turn when he was invited to join the HNB which had just emerged on the scene. He was interviewed and recruited by M. Dharmaraja, a Ceylonese covenanted officer of the National Bank of India who had been entrusted with the challenge of building an entirely new bank from the nucleus of the then Hatton Bank. Dharmaraja had only four branches to begin with but by the time he retired in 1988 and handed over his mantle to Rienzie he had taken over the assets and liabilities of the Merchant Bank, one of the country's oldest banks and put the HNB on a sound footing. Before this however Rienzie spent four years away from the bosom of the HNB when he accepted an attachment to the British Bank of the Middle East on a contract but the gravitational pull of the parent bank was too strong to resist and he returned in 1987 as Deputy General Manager. Innovative measures As a banker Rienzie Wijetilleke has been responsible for several innovative measures which had broken the mould of conventional banking. Recognising the fact that banking facilities were only available to the affluent and the business community even as late as the 1990s Rienzie introduced the scheme named Gami Pubuduwa geared to the village. The aim was to give financial support for village-based smallscale economic ventures in areas such as agriculture, small industries and commerce. Since 1989 assistance to 15,000 projects has been approved and of the employment generated more than 20 per cent has been to those below the age of 25 and 55 per cent to those in the 26-35 age group. The idea has been to assist the youth to realise their own potential and wean them away from destructive or anti-social activities. With the same idea in mind Rienzie also piloted the school leavers' certificate course for young people in 1989 at the height of the period of terror and counter terror. At a time when universities and even schools were sporadically closed this provided the youth with an opportunity to put their talents to constructive use. In 1999 Rienzie took over the Interim Committee of the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka when Sri Lankan Cricket and its administration had hit its nadir. After that year's Board elections had ended in scenes of sorry chaos an interim committee under Rienzie was appointed by the then Sports Minister S. B. Dissanayake acting under his powers vested by Sections 32 and 33 of the Sport Law. The other members of the committee were Michael Tissera, S. Skandakumar, Sidath Wettimuny and Ashantha de Mel. Kushil Gunasekera functioned from the year 2000 as Assistant Secretary. Spectacular results The results were spectacular. Under the overhauling which followed the Wijetilleke regime, Sri Lanka won the Traingular One-Day Tournament for the AIWA Cup in August 1999 and in September-October the same year the three-Test series against the unofficial world champions, Australia. In November-December the same year Sri Lanka won outright both the three-match Test series as well as the three one-day games against Zimbabwe. What is more Sri Lanka tamed the Pakistanis in their own den both in the three one-day matches as well as the three-Test series. Those who have worked closely with him see Rienzie Wijetilleke as an intensely humane person. He is understanding they say but nobody can take this as a sign of weakness. He is firm when circumstances so demand and also abhors sycophancy. In 1966 Rienzie Wijetilleke married Dhammika whom he had known as a friend of his sister's at St. John's College, Nugegoda. Two of their three children were born in England during his stint there. Great heights There is little doubt that Rienzie has taken the HNB to great heights while simultaneously contributing to Sri Lankan banking. When he took over the HNB was a small bank with a profit and an asset base of Rs. three billion, a staff of 1,000 and only 30 branches. Today there are 104 branches with a staff of 4,000 and assets of Rs. 104 billion. While the bank no doubt gains by all this what is socially significant and underpins Rienzie's thinking is that through schemes such as Gami Pubuduwa over 40,000 village businessmen have been helped to set up their own enterprises and contribute directly to the economy. Rienzie who had attended the daham pasala of the Sri Parakumba Pirivena, Ethulkotte as a child, is a devoted Buddhist although he does not wear his convictions on his sleeve. He is also very much attached to his old school Wesley College not hesitating to set aside a whole day for an orientation course for student job seekers at his alma mater. He has imbibed the best qualities of the self-supporting middle-class imparted to him by his father as a self-made Government servant of colonial times. What emerges is an intensely human picture of a man who has scaled the heights through his own efforts but has not lost touch with his roots. This same sense of humanity Rienzie Wijetilleke has brought to the business of banking by taking the HNB away from the conventional categories where banks were merely lending houses and made the bank an active partner of the country's economic progress. By both precept and practice he has revolutionised Sri Lanka banking and given it a social dimension and a human face. |
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