Sampath to set up another 70 branches island-wide in two years

Opens premier branch at founder’s residence

By Azhar Razak

Sampath Bank last week opened its 131st branch in Colombo as a premier branch with a view to providing services exclusively for its high-net worth or what it terms as priority banking customers. The branch, which will be known as a ‘platinum plus’ branch, is the first of its kind for the bank and was set up at the bank’s founder’s residence at No. 18, Cambridge Place, Colombo 07 to serve the bank’s 1,000 odd island-wide priority customers.

Picture shows Sampath Bank Chairman, Arthur Senanayake (R), Deputy Chairman Sunil Wijesinghe (C) and Chief Executive Officer, Harris Premaratne declaring open Bank’s latest platinum plus branch at Cambridge Place, Colombo 07

“This is a great occasion and a landmark event for us since we have set this branch up at our founder, N. U. Jayawardhena’s residence. It is also pleasing to note that we have been very aggressive in our expansion drive this year since we have opened a total of 1 9 branches, the highest in our history,” Sampath Bank’s Chief Executive Officer, Harris Premaratne told a media conference last week.
He added that their bank had pioneered information technology use in banking, starting as a fully computerised bank where customers could transact at any branch and was also the first bank to introduce ATM’s and credit cards to the local banking industry.
“The concept of Uni-banking, in which all service outlets being connected, facilitating customers to transact with any outlets in the network, was a novel experiment in the local banking industry, at the time Sampath launched it. Sampath became a fully computerised bank from day one, which began setting trends for many others to follow,” Premaratne said.
Meanwhile, Sampath Bank Chairman, Arthur Senanayake said that the Bank will continue its aggressive expansion drive in the next two years and was hoping to open around 40 new branches island-wide in the year 2010. He said the bank will go in for a Rs. 4 billion rights issue in 2010 to fuel this expansion.
“Our target is to have 200 branches operating island wide by the end of 2011,” Senanayake said.
The bank, which already has three branches in the North, intends to open three more branches in the region during the first half of 2010 while the bank has also plans to open six new branches in the East, making the total number of branches in the East to 17.
“One of the major challenges faced by the industry is the pressure arising due to the drop in interest rates which may eat up our margins this year,” he disclosed.
Recently, Sampath Bank had won the best Corporate Citizen 2009 award that was hosted by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, Sri Lanka’s leading trade chamber under its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Awards programme. The bank was also named ‘Bank of the Year 2009’ for Sri Lanka in awards conducted by ‘The Banker’, London based magazine affiliated to the Financial Times newspaper.