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| Sunday, 28 April 2002 |
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SL A rating for HNB Fitch Ratings Lanka Ltd., (FRL) has assigned an SL A national rating for Implied Long term Unsecured Senior Debt of Hatton National Bank (HNB). HNB is said to be the largest private sector commercial bank in the country with a network of 129 customer centres spanning all provinces. The entire network is linked through the bank's computerised customer service network HatnaNet. HNB was the first private commercial bank in Sri Lanka to establish representative offices in the South Asian region and is said to be the only private Lankan bank to maintain offices in South Asia. The bank, which had its origins in a small plantations sector bank prior to the 20th century, has grown to be one of the largest in the country. It is a listed company with an issued capital of Rs. 650 million. It is presently the 10 largest in terms of market capitalization in the Colombo Stock Exchange. The bank also accounts for a large share of private remittances into the country, and has managed to build up the second largest NRFC base in the country. The bank has won many local and international accolades for excellence in financial reporting. Adverse external circumstances resulted in HNB recording poor results for the year ended December 31 2001. However, the year's performance has prompted the bank to embark on a strategic redirection drive aimed at remedying operational and structural deficiencies. The bank has undertaken far reaching measures to ensure and sustain credit quality, raise capital adequacy, reduce cost to income ratio, improve return on assets and reduce its vulnerability to changes in the external environment. It has induced new technology into the banking process, and is moving towards offering a complete array of anywhere banking products, including Internet banking. Meanwhile, HNB has announced that it has connected its Jaffna branch to the rest of the branch network through 'HatnaNet'. HatnaNet's is also a digital trade floor where all external business organisations could use the bank's IT infrastructure to transact business among each other on a common platform. Customers in areas such as Jaffna, Vavuniya, Trincomalee, Ampara, Batticaloa and Kalmunai will now enjoy the anywhere banking service. The customer centres at Geli Oya, Peradeniya and Thalawathugoda also went online recently. E-commerce, business to business, m-commerce, fully automated banking kiosks and automated mobile banking units, are some of the features offered by HatnaNet. Gami Pubuduwa the bank's rural credit scheme, has also received a boost from the network. |
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