Bank of Ceylon (BOC), in recognition of women’s role in society, has introduced a number of initiatives to encourage them to secure them financially while celebrating the best things they deserve. The bank’s ‘Kantha Ran Ginum’ (KRG) is the prime savings account designed especially to empower women in the country. 

In celebration of this year’s International Women’s Day on March 8, BOC will offer exciting gifs to add a bit of excitement. A non-stick pan is on offer for a fresh deposit of Rs.25,000 or more to an existing KRG account or a new account. 

A colourful jug is offered for a deposit between Rs.10,000 and Rs.25,000. An exciting new promotion is there for all BOC Facebook fans. Out of those who take part in the promotion uploaded on Facebook page – BOC Smartgen – five winners will get gifts each worth Rs.10,000 from Stone & Strings. Fifty Stone & String gift vouchers each worth Rs.1000 are also given as consolation prizes. 

BOC KRG is a unique savings account that aids Sri Lankan women to accomplish their aspirations in life. The BOC KRG account promises an additional 0.5 percent interest over the normal savings account and a free life insurance cover amounting to 10 times of the minimum balance in the account, maximum amounting to of Rs.500,000 until the account holder turns 60 (conditions apply).

 
The account holder is also entitled to other facilities including an instant loan facility up to a maximum of 90 percent of the account balance, online banking, SMS banking and a debit card facility. In line with the bank’s digital transformation, BOC KRG can also be converted or opened under SmartGen as a fully digitalized account where a passbook is no longer required to operate the account where customers are given the freedom to do banking anytime anywhere seamlessly through the online banking facility, which comes absolutely free.

Customers can also walk into any BOC branch for transactions as the customer’s photograph and signature are captured digitally at the time of account opening adding more safety to the account. This facility also comes with a free SMS facility on transactions carried out on the account. It sends a month end email statement to the customer to a provided email address.  

Apart from direct benefits from the KRG savings account, BOC has formulated a number of initiatives to empower women in rural and small and medium enterprise (SME) sectors. Poverty alleviation microfinance projects (PAMP) are also a popular loan scheme through which the bank has uplifted the lives of over 124,000 members in over 24,000 women groups disbursing nearly Rs.1.8 billion at the time of writing.