HNB to streamline recoveries and boost customer service with launch of Centre of Aspiration

Sri Lanka’s most digitally innovative bank, HNB PLC, announced the launch of its state-of-the-art Centre of Aspiration, a new centralised unit within the bank dedicated solely to manage the bank’s debt collection operations. 

Situated at the bank’s Head Office in Colombo 10, the Centre of the Aspiration will now be handling all collections operations that had previously been distributed across 252 branches island-wide. The launch of the HNB Centre of Aspiration follows the recent opening of its Centre of Excellence, another dedicated facility set-up to centralise credit and operational processes across the branch network, as part of a wider strategy to centralise its back-end processes. This would strengthen frontline staff efforts to engage in marketing, customer service and networking.  

This initiative will add significant value to HNB’s vision 2020 aspirations and its transformational journey, specifically fulfilling its aspirations to have “the most diversified asset portfolio with the lowest NPA,” by 2020 according to HNB Managing Director/CEO Jonathan Alles. 

Manned by a team of 60 at first, the Centre of Aspiration is spearheaded by HNB Chief Risk Officer/Assistant General Manager – Risk Damith Pallewatte. 

Elaborating on the approach being taken at the Centre of Aspiration, he said engaging the customer early in order to remind and follow-up on any upcoming payments or missed payments will positively transform the culture and focus on debt collection within HNB to be more customer centric. He reiterated that early contact, flexibility and consistency supported by the state of the art technology would be fundamental to the success of this unit. 

Speaking at the launch event, HNB Board Director Rose Cooray highlighted the importance of ensuring skills development in order to keep staff engaged in collections activities which in turn will enable a deeper understanding of customers and an improved ability to meet and exceed expectations. She also emphasized the importance of the centralised collection unit to continuously improve the quality of the loan book.  

Also participating in the launch was HNB Chief Operating Officer Dilshan Rodrigo and HNB Manager – Centralised Collections Piyakara Jayarathne, who both addressed the gathering on the potential of the new unit to further strengthen the HNB’s bottom-line.