DFCC Bank implements energy saving initiatives in line with Sustainability Strategy

DFCC Bank through its Sustainability Strategy, seeks to create a resilient world for everyone. 

Developed in 2020, DFCC Bank’s Sustainability Strategy maps out the bank’s sustainability goals for the next decade, with a vision to emerge as the leading bank contributing towards sustainability by 2030.

As part of the Sustainability Strategy, the bank works on its big goals; A Carbon Neutral Bank by 2030, the Bank for Green Finance in Sri Lanka, and to achieve Sustainable work lifestyles by 2030.

To meet the goal of transforming into a carbon-neutral bank, DFCC Bank has identified energy efficiency and electricity savings as a key focus area, particularly against the backdrop of Sri Lanka’s present energy crisis. In this endeavour, the bank has launched many initiatives to optimize energy efficiency across its entire network, while also reducing its impact on the environment. While focusing on energy savings, DFCC Bank is also embarking on a long-term initiative to transition towards renewable energy.

One of the most innovative mechanisms for increasing energy savings and improving energy efficiency at DFCC Bank is the DFCC Energy Saving App. The App was built in-house and gathers, evaluates, measures, reports, analyzes and forecasts electricity consumption data across the bank’s network. The app also acts as an Eco-Management System, which extracts, transforms and loads data to analyze and present via energy dashboards. The dashboards present various analyses including pattern recognition and outlier analysis.

Explaining further and discussing the Bank’s Sustainability Strategy, Thimal Perera, Director/CEO of DFCC Bank said, “In our quest to do our part to reduce our energy usage and increase efficiency amidst the ongoing challenges, our Energy Sub-Committee has designed and launched an energy- saving app, which provides key insights across our network and also shows, on a geographic level, where energy consumption is highest. 

In addition to this, we have also implemented a variety of interactive energy-saving activities, such as various competitions designed to conserve electricity. By gamifying the process of energy-saving and efficiency enhancement, we are involving all our staff in this noble and critically important endeavour. “

DFCC aims to become 100 percent paperless internally and 50 percent paperless in total by the year 2024. To achieve this, the bank has taken various measures and one that stands out the most is the “Paperless Certification Programme”. 

Under this programme, all departments are encouraged to make changes to their respective processes to reduce paper by at least 85 percent and submit those processes to be independently audited and certified as paperless. This initiative created a lot of engagement across the bank and resulted in sizable annualized paper savings.

Also, the bank is now working on a project to open accounts digitally without any paper. This would not only drastically reduce the bank’s paper consumption but will also make banking much more convenient and fast for 
the customers.