From left: CEO Nalin Wijekoon, Director Nirmal De Silva, Director Rangana Koralage, Chairman Chandula Abeywickrema, Director Waas, Director Krystle Reid Wijesuriya and Deputy CEO Terrance Kumara
Pic by Pradeep Pathirana
PMF Finance PLC, which has been navigating a new path to future growth and success since 2019, has now crossed another notable milestone. To align the company’s identity with its transformational journey of growth and success, the company is relaunching itself as PMF Finance PLC.
This journey of growth and success resulted in PMF taking a 360-degree turn to a profit-making entity within one year of revitalised operations. To further enhance and consolidate its journey while reflecting its new thinking and strategic priorities, the company’s leadership and management made a concerted decision to embark on a rebranding effort. This new identity and brand reflect PMF as it stands today – a customer-centric organisation, leading the way in innovative and transformative financial solutions to benefit the Sri Lankan people and the nation’s prosperity in the long term.
Much thought and consideration have been given to the new PMF brand. The letters P, M, and F stand for ‘Path-Maker Frontier’, alluding to the company’s purpose to offer differentiated yet useful and needed financial solutions to its current and future customers. The new brand colours used are red and black. Red denotes strength and passion, while black denotes power and elegance. The asterisk used in the brand mark denotes something special: it is the symbol of distinction. The asterisk mark can also be seen as a rising sun, symbolising progress and a new day and a new path to achieve success from all stakeholder perspectives.
“This new brand has consolidated our efforts in turning around an established financial institution with inherent issues into a modern, innovative and go-to brand for people’s financial needs,” said PMF Chairman Chandula Abeywickrema.
He also reiterates that the company’s efforts to renew and revitalise operations to become sustainable in today’s dynamic economic and financial conditions have progressed according to plan and resulted in creating milestones in a short period.
PMF continues to navigate its five-year transformational strategic plan judiciously by adapting to current economic conditions and the prevailing challenges faced by the financial industry. Having completed internal restructuring, the company is now focused on creating an environment and culture where the focus on organisational success and achievement is seamlessly integrated with its customers’ financial journey.
The 3As approach – Accessibility, Availability, and Affordability – taken by the company carves out the path for future success. As the company caters to a range of customer demographics the focus in the coming year is to become a truly intrinsic customer-centric organisation, catering to absolute customer satisfaction without discrimination.
The continued opening of physical branches coupled with the use of technology for virtual and remote access to PMF’s financial products and services will remain a key priority of the company in the medium to longer terms. Together with employee training and the placement of the right people for the right ensures accessibility of financial services by customers. New product development initiatives and process enhancements enable PMF to ensure the availability of financial services to meet the diverse and varied financial needs of customers. Furthermore, offering products and services at the right price, at the right time, to the right customer is the strategy of affordability being followed by the company to fulfil its goals and vision for inclusive financial services to the Sri Lankan people.
The new brand will continue to support these efforts and bring to the limelight the company’s beliefs at any given opportunity, creating a cohesive message for not only customers but all stakeholders.
In its 35-year of operations, PMF has seen a plethora of changes and has undergone integral restructuring in the last two years. This has been possible due to the steadfast support of PMF’s parent company, Sterling Capital Investments (Private) Limited and all other stakeholders. The board of directors, management and employees of PMF remain determinedly committed to carrying forward the sustainable journey of PMF by offering their expertise and experience to steadily develop and grow business operations.
As PMF Chief Executive Officer Nalin Wijekoon stated, “We are excited about our new brand. This new brand will help not only us [employees and management] of PMF to absorb our customer-centric culture and ensure we give our best to the company’s success but it will also visually remind our customers and other stakeholders of PMF’s commitment to them.”
PMF has certainly been making waves in the financial industry in the last few years notwithstanding the pandemic or the dismal economic circumstances. The company began by undertaking extensive internal restructuring and revitalising business operations, to become a profitable financial institution that then launched an innovative new financial product - the Navodaya Entrepreneurship Loan Scheme for Rural Transformation in October 2021.
Now the latest is its rebranding efforts to align its identity with the new path the company is taking. As Abeywickrema stated, “We [PMF] are a stable financial institution. We have maintained good governance, complied with the CBSL requirements and established processes to become a fully customer-centric financial enterprise. We remain true to our roots but also understand that with changing times and circumstances the business must also change. Our new brand identity will help us to grow and become an integral part of Sri Lanka’s financial services industry and support the financial prosperity of all Sri Lankans.”
