People’s Bank goes live in the
Northern peninsula

People’s Bank (PB), Sri Lanka’s Best Loved Bank, has gone live with integrated core banking systems to support its retail and corporate banking operations. The bank went live in 16 branches across the Northern peninsula, bringing its total number connected through the system to 500 - out of a total of 650 branches island-wide.

CEO, General Manager People’s Bank P.V. Pathirana, addressing the gathering in Jaffna through the internet from the Head Office in Colombo (DSC 0092), and the Inauguration Ceremony of Core Banking Implementation in Jaffna held at the Jaffna University branch

This is the first implementation phase of the project. Further phased roll outs will see a speedy conversion of all other branches within the next quarters of 2010.
With the establishment of peace, the Jaffna peninsula has become a very important regional development area of the country. The opening of the A9 road connecting Jaffna to the rest of the country has triggered a boom in agriculture and fisheries as demand increased and more people are now travelling to the region in search of building livelihoods. “We’re inviting entrepreneurs to come and do their business with the bank in order to prosper - which will in turn benefit the economic development of the region,” stated General Manager/CEO of People’s Bank, P.V. Pathirana.
A number of Sri Lankan banks have rushed to open branches in the area after the conflict ended, where only state-run People’s Bank have previously dominated. “We are also the prime bank that introduced Tamil and Sinhala banking to the region at a time when there were no bank branches anywhere in the peninsula. We created the banking literature and culture of the country by closely associating with the people. Even during the war, we carried out banking facilities in Jaffna, together with areas such as Mullaithivu and Mannar etc. Most of these branches ran manually up to date but today we are proud to introduce the core banking system to these branches,” he added.
According to the CEO, with core banking systems supporting the business, PB will have the scalability, front-end capabilities and systems integration they need to deliver technology driven products such as SMS, Palm Top and internet banking, and debit-card facilities, to offer a faster, more effective service to their customers. “By going live, we can significantly improve our customer service approach to withstand increasing competition across the region from both local players and new market entrants, whilst this latest improvement will set us in good stead to achieve our growth objectives across the region.” This will significantly improve business efficiencies in terms of introducing anywhere-anytime banking to the customers, ensuring that the customers need not go to their respective branches to complete desired transactions - but instead can collect or withdraw money, pay their bills, encash cheques, order cheque books, check account balances etc. whilst also having the ability to carry out other trade, finance and business activities such as share market dealings, checking foreign currency rates, Deposit & Lending interest rates, opening Letters of Credits and so forth through the improvement and enhancement of this facility.
“We also plan to mobilise foreign currency deposits as well. During the time of Civil Unrest the people of these areas migrated to various European and American countries and as a result, we saw an increase in the foreign exchange remittances. However, the difficulty was in remitting the money. Therefore, today we offer a speedy collection of foreign remittances through efficient NRFC and RFC account services – enabling the customer to withdraw money instantly online and in real time,” Pathirana stated.
A dedicated team of Tamil speaking employees have been employed to operate at the branches – those educated at the Jaffna University and who are closely associated with the cultures of the people in the region. Further, with the unparalleled richness in functionality on an integrated, service oriented culture, with front- to-back office support, People’s Bank’s total commitment to further strengthen the systems will enable its customers to benefit from the latest advances in technology, whilst also ensuring business agility, continuity, data integrity and reduced downtime, all resulting in delivering a significant, immediate and ongoing benefits to both the customers and the bank. “By next week we will see all branches from Point Pedro to Dondra connected, and we are proud to announce that all facilities enjoyed by the people of the south can now be enjoyed by the people of the northern region as well. Distance will never be a barrier for us – our mission is to embrace new technology and to continuously invest in benefiting our 10 million customer base,” concluded the CEO. “With an unmatched branch outreach throughout the country, we have opened the door for every Sri Lankan to reach the world, and perform banking at their fingertips.”
Present at the live feed through which the General Manager addressed the gathering present at the inauguration ceremony in Jaffna was also Senior Deputy General Manager (Operations & Retail Banking) - H.S. Darmasiri, Head of Marketing & Public Affairs Deepal Abeysekera, Head of Finance Yohan Sosa, Deputy Head of Information Technology, Sobitha Weerasekera and Assistant General Manager (Branch Operations) of People’s Bank G.G.C. Ariyarathne.