HNB wins Sri Lanka Technology Excellence Award for Robotics - Banking

From left: HNB Associate Avishka Fernando, HNB Project Manager Process Excellence Services Nuwanka Perera, HNB Application Support and Solution Lead Meth Bulathsinhala, HNB Head of Centralised Credit Administration Angelina Dharmaraj, HNB Head of Process Excellence Services Christopher Thuraisingham, HNB Head of Custody and Trustee Services Tyrone Hannan, HNB Associate Yohani Abeygunawardena, HNB IT Project Manager Chithral Wickrama, HNB Manager Data Centre System Administration Asanka Abeyrathne and HNB Relationship Manager Custody and Trustee Services Niroshan Chandrapalan  

Sri Lanka’s premiere private sector commercial bank, Hatton National Bank PLC (HNB), clinched the Sri Lanka Technology Excellence Award for Robotics – Banking, at Asian Technology Excellence Awards 2023, for integration of robotic process automation (RPA) with the custody banking and trustee service as part of its digitalisation and process automation journey, which commenced in 2019. 

Spearheaded by the process excellence (services) team using a multi-pronged RPA implementation strategy and propelled by HNB’s continuous improvement culture, key focus areas include the back office and centralised processing units to improve customer experience whilst reaping significant productivity gains.

Working in partnership with domain experts, process automation at the custody banking and trustee service resulted in employees having to focus on more cognitive tasks, setting up a sound foundation for scaling up. The RPA automates manual tasks, reduces the risk of human errors and has resulted in a significant reduction of processing time by almost 90 percent for trade confirmations and approximately 96 percent for equity and margin settlements with exponential productivity gains, greatly reducing the load placed on staff by repetitive volume-based processing. This has enabled customer trade reports being provided to fund managers and customers on the same day as opposed to the following day as per the existing industry practice, setting a new benchmark in the local banking space. HNB’s digitalisation drive through effective implementation of RPA follows its impressive growth in the sector reflected by assets of over Rs.500 billion as at 2Q 2023, further reinforcing the bank as a leader in the local custodian and trustee space. Concurrently, HNB is also in the process of rolling out the insurance renewal process with RPA integration at its centralised credit administration department to improve customer experience, standardisation and process efficiency across the branch network.   

HNB’s digitalisation and process automation efforts demonstrated through the effective implementation of RPA is a testament to the company’s continuous investment in technology to maximise efficiency for greater returns and its steadfast commitment to continuous improvement.
The Asian Technology Excellence Awards acknowledges exceptional companies that are at the forefront of adapting to digital disruption and leading the technological revolution within their specific sectors.