People’s Leasing recognised for responsible corporate citizenship

People’s Leasing and Finance (PLC) was recognised as one of the Best Ten Corporate Citizens at the Best Corporate Citizen Sustainability Awards 2017, presented by the premier trade chamber in the country, the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce.

PLC has the singular honour of being the only finance company to be thus feted, in recognition of its sound business and governance practices which remain at the heart of the company’s culture.

Reporting excellence of PLC was also recognised with four awards at the recently held 53rd CA Sri Lanka Annual Report Awards presented by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA Sri Lanka) including a Gold award in the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Reporting category.

“Sustainable businesses create equality by reducing the gap between the rich and the poor. Being SME focused, PLC seeks to encourage inclusive finance, mainly financing for enterprise development. In doing so, PLC is also conscious of the impact made at a social, environmental and an economic level. We believe in achieving a balance that matches our financial achievements with returns to society and we are privileged to retain our position as one of the Best Ten Corporate Citizens of the country for the fifth time,” says PLC CEO/GM A.S. Ibrahim.

PLC is committed to driving a performance based culture powered by a dynamic team of over 2,600 personnel, while sustaining a strong focus on understanding and responding to customer needs. The company also bagged the Gold award at the SLITAD awards presented by the Sri Lanka Institute of Training and Development for best practices in human resource management recently. Firmly committed to supporting issues of social importance such as environmental sustainability, enterprise development and financial literacy, road safety, uplifting education and empowerment of local communities, PLC also takes pride in its high level of staff volunteerism through the branch network which reinforces its corporate social responsibility initiatives.

PLC believes in ensuring a green footprint across the value chain while driving digitisation, optimising the effective usage of resources. ‘SelfeCash’, one of their newly launched products of promise, was recognized with a Gold award at the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards 2017, presented by Asia Pacific ICT Alliance (APICTA), registering a tremendous achievement for the company and for Sri Lanka. Having adapted to changing technological needs, the company empower customers in real time such as enabling online financial transactions activated via ‘PLC Online’ and encouraging a new generation of customers to engage with the company seamlessly. Among the services introduced are mobile banking through ‘Intapp’ and serving customer at their doorstep, which reduces paperwork and the need 
to travel.

“Our responsibility as a good corporate citizen is based on sustaining our most valued stakeholders: Employees, customers, business partners, the community and the environment. They have enabled us to emerge as a responsible corporate citizen and we are indeed thankful to them. Our pledge for the future is to continue to empower the nation as a catalyst for inclusive economic growth,” says Ibrahim.

As the flagship subsidiary of the state-owned People’s Bank, PLC also is the parent of People’s Insurance PLC, People’s Microfinance Ltd, People’s Leasing Fleet Management Ltd, People’s Leasing Property Development Ltd and People’s Leasing Havelock Properties Ltd PLC remains the largest non-bank financial institution in Sri Lanka with an asset base of Rs.150 million and is ranked AA- (lka) by Fitch Ratings Lanka, B (international) by Fitch Ratings International and B+/B by Standards and Poor’s. PLC has also been on the S&P Sri Lanka 20 Index of the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), since 2014: Its constituents being the 20 largest blue chip companies listed on the CSE. In recognition of its outstanding achievements, PLC was listed as the 15th in the ‘Business Today Top 
30’ ranking.

PLC is a licensed finance company registered with the Monetary Board of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.