Sampath Bank shines with highest growth

Zainul Meeadh

Dinusha Ihalananda AGM, Operations and Halin Hettigoda Manager, Network Service Centre receiving their awards from Governor Central Bank, Ajith Nivard Cabraal.

Sampath Bank have introduced and showcased their feats and achievements in the local banking scene for years. And it was definitely a triumphant moment for the Sampath Bank team to have won two prestigious awards namely, "Highest Outward Volume Contributor in SLIPS" and "Bank with the highest growth rate in SLIPS" at the recently concluded award ceremony of Lanka Clear (Pvt) Ltd to mark their 10 Anniversary.

In an interview with the Daily News Sampath Bank PLC, Chief Manager Deposits and Remittances, Rohana Dissanayake and Manager Network Services Centre, Halin Hettigoda spoke about the awards won, and the future plans for Sampath Bank.

SLIPS and SCPS:

Explaining about the Sri Lanka Inter Bank Payment System (SLIPS) Hettigoda said "It is an independent body controlled by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, through Lanka Clear (Pvt) Ltd. This is the system through which every bank transfers credit to other banks"

The importance of Sampath Corporate Payment System (SCPS), explained by Dissanayake, "When the payments are needed to be executed, be they crediting of salary or commission, we use this SCPS system without any draw backs or any shortcomings. We treat it as a single debit and multiple credits.

This is a system which ensures no manual intervention of entries. This is where, a simple data software helps a company to simply enter their information in their own systems where it will be simply transferred to the Banks system and Credit will be debited within a maximum of one day to any banking network, and within the same day to Sampath Bank accounts. This leaves no room for human errors. These transactions are very quick and it takes less than a minute to take effect. SCPS is capable of handling even 1,000 transactions a minute. This is the cheapest and the quickest system of transferring funds. Our charges are about Rs. 5 a transaction and it is affordable. We call it affordable as we charge a bare minimum of Rs. 5. On the other hand customers need not bother about transporting a bulk of cash which is of very high risk, and getting manual resources to man the cash payment, which includes counting and bundling pay packets and getting the correct cash denominations which are all costly operations as well as time-consuming,"

Awards:

Out of the five awards presented under the Medium Category, Sampath Bank was able to win two awards.

Hettigoda and DIssanayake together said, they have competitors in this category as well, although their product naming could be different, they too deal with single debit and multiple credit accounts. Talking of the award that were won, Hettigoda said, "The Highest Outward Volume Contributor in SLIPS" is due to the high number of transactions that we had been able to make with the companies who had subscribed to this service of SCPS but however, achieving, "Bank with the highest growth rate in SLIPS" was more important as it was not a mere calculation, but a comparison of our growth rate and we are proud to have won these two awards" "These awards are a reflection of the Bank having a special product of its own" remarked Dissanayke about the SCPS in conclusion.