NSB to expand ME presence

ANJANA SAMARASINGHE

NSB Senior DGM S.D.N. Perera

National Savings Bank (NSB) is to appoint more representatives for Middle East to facilitate foreign remittances of Sri Lankan migrant workers in the region.

Senior Deputy General Manager of NSB S.D.N Perera told Daily News Business that the bank is expecting to appoint representatives in Oman, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. “At the moment we have few representatives in this region. We have representatives in Italy and Korea too,” he said.

“NSB entered into agreements with postal services in Italy, Israel and Germany for facilitating foreign remittances of Sri Lankan workers in those countries.

Through these agreements migrant workers will be able to send their money in a fast, reliable and cost effective manner,” he said.

The bank also commenced its call centre facility to provide necessary information for all their customers recently. Apart from setting up the call centre facility the bank now is focused more on its IT infrastructure to improve day to day banking operations.

The bank will introduce internet banking within three months time and expects to introduce hand held devices in their day to day operations to provide more customized service for the customers. The bank also expects to increase its ATMs to 155.

NSB call centre Pictures by Saliya Rupasinghe

“There was a necessity for the bank to establish a call centre. We are getting nearly 150 calls per day and most of them are on loans, deposits, bill payments and NRFC accounts. At the moment we have over ten call center agents and expect to increase this amount in the near future,” he said.

The bank did not outsource the call centre facility since its operations has to deal with confidential information of the customers.

“Customers now can obtain necessary information in all three languages without visiting the bank. Most of our customers abroad had problems with reaching banking information due to the time differences in those countries and Sri Lanka.

We have planned to provide call centre facility 24 hours from next year onwards,” Perera said.

“With the introduction of the Master debit card to our customers it is important to have a call centre service to improve our customer service and we are planning to introduce VISA debit card next year.

Through this call centre facility the bank expects to set up a customer database and maintain strong relationship with its customers.

We will use the call centre facility for our future marketing activities and expand our services,” he said.

The call centre will provide information on NSB products, NRFC/RFC account, housing loan information with all details pertaining to instalment payment and all arrears of balances, saving and fixed deposit account balance inquiries, utility bill payment inquiries, interest rates, postal bank account balance inquiries, branch/ATM information, information on handling Master/ATM cards and it will also take customer complaints too,” he said.