HNB Board Director Dr. Rohan Karunaratne opens the new Centre of Excellence in the presence of HNB Chief Operating Officer Dilshan Rodrigo, Chief Risk Officer/Assistant General Manager Risk Damith Pallewatte, Assistant General Manager Operations Asanga Uduwela, Chief Human Resource Officer/Deputy General Manager Human Resources Chiranthi Cooray, Assistant General Manager Deposits and Remittances/Chief Employee Experience Officer Kalum Wijesooriya, Senior Manager Centralized Operations Ajith Ferdinando and Deputy General Manager Legal/Board Secretary Thushari Ranaweera

Sri Lanka’s most progressive private commercial bank, Hatton National Bank PLC (HNB), conducted a special ceremony to mark the opening of its centralized processing centre, titled Centre of Excellence, to accommodate its back office operations for its extensive network of customer service centres. 

The Centre of Excellence, situated at No.10, Sri Uttarananda Mawatha, Colombo 3, was established by bringing together HNB’s Centralized Operations Department (COD) and Centralized Credit Operations (CCO) units and houses over 350 staff.

The opening ceremony was graced by HNB Chief Operating Officer Dilshan Rodrigo as the chief guest and HNB Board Director Dr. Rohan Karunaratne, HNB Chief Risk Officer/Assistant General Manager Risk Damith Pallewatte, HNB Assistant General Manager Operations Asanga Uduwela as guests of honour and other corporate management members.     

In his address Rodrigo commented that this is historic step in the digital transformation journey, where branch banking would focus on customer acquisition, relationship building and retention, the Centre of Excellence would focus on streamlined processes, systems, skilled staff, delivering quality with speed to effectively support the front line.

The ultimate test of success would be to drive customer experience and satisfaction to a different level. There are significant efforts being made to incorporate best practices not just by improving the existing processes but moving in to redesign and innovations of our processes to match the digital lifestyles of customers today. 

The opening of HNB’s Centre of Excellence demonstrates our commitment to drive best-in-class customer experience in delivering the range of retail lending products to our customers. In this quest we have studied the entire process from end-to-end and remain committed to deliver the best solution that meets the needs of our increasingly digital customers,” Pallewatte elaborated. 

“When it comes to back office operations, we always have to remind ourselves continuously that we need to serve both our internal and external customers. We have to ensure best conditions are provided to branches to enable them to provide customer satisfaction at highest levels to all our customers. Branches have been requesting for a long time to centralize back office operations, in order to provide quality and consistent service for customers. 

Our team here is geared to provide best level of service when it comes to providing back office services and also thanked the service providers for the great support provided to carry out outsourced operations,” Uduwela commented.

The digitalization and centralization of its back end processes are anticipated to drastically streamline HNB’s backend processes, enabling faster turnaround, improved and consistent quality in interactions with customers. Operating across 252 customer service centres islandwide, HNB has one of the most extensive retail footprints in the Sri Lankan banking industry. Given that all major back-end processes – spanning both credit and operational processes – will now be centralized at the Centre of Excellence, HNB aims to completely free up its branch teams to focus on delivering highly personalized and specialized banking solutions to its clients, all while building lasting relationships founded on trust and mutual respect.