International award for First Guardian

by Shirajiv SIRIMANE

First Guardian Equities, a stockbroker notched up another first by being the first financial institution in Sri Lanka to receive the ISO 9001:2008 compliance certificate, awarded by Moody's' the internationally reputed standard setting and rating agency which conducted stringent tests on the firm.

"We are at the start of a great economic boom, in which a cross section of the country's economy will attain its true potential in the coming years. The financial services sector will play a lead role" said CEO/MD of First Guardian Equities Rohan Goonewardene. He said with economic growth, service standards need to increase tremendously with customer expectations and we feel that the time is opportune to invest in our service organisational infrastructure to maintain our competitive edge. We invest heavily on our people, our systems and our processes to provide our customers the highest service excellence. The Moody's certificate of compliance is one such move in a fast evolving market place".

Country Manager for Moody's Sanjeewa Senevirathna, said that the certification process requires that an organisation meets stringent criteria and adequate monitoring of the processes to ensure that they are effective and create a culture of continuous improvement.

First Guardian Equities, in recent times has introduced many technological innovations to local financial markets, such as Financial News Alerts with their media partner Ada Derana News, Omnivantage which allows their clients to monitor the market on their mobile phones, and, also SMS marketing.